

CHARLES LINCOLN WHITE 



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THE 


CHILDREN OF THE 
LIGHTHOUSE 


Interdenominational 
Home Mission Study Course 

Each volume i2mo, cloth, 50c. net (post, extra) ; paper, 
30c. net (post, extra) 

Under Our Flag. By Alice M. Guernsey. 

The Call of the Waters. By Katharine R. Crowell. 
From Darkness to Light. By Mary Helm. 
Conservation of National Ideals. A Symposium. 

Mormonism, the Islam of America. By Bruce Kinney, 
D.D. 

The New America. By Mary Clark Barnes and Dr. 
L. C. Barnes. 

America, God’s Melting-Pot. By Laura Gerould Craig. 

Paper, net 25c. (post, extra). 

In Red Man’s Land. A Study of the American Indian. 
By Francis E. Leupp. 

Home Missions in Action. By Edith H. Allen. 

Old Spain in New America. By Robert McLean, D.D. 
and Grace Petrie Williams. 

JUNIOR COURSE 

Cloth, net 40c. (post, extra); paper.net 25c. (post, extra). 
Best Things in America. By Katharine R. Crowell. 
Some Immigrant Neighbors. By John R. Henry, D.D. 
Comrades from Other Lands. By Leila Allen Dimock. 
Goodbird the Indian. By Gilbert L. Wilson. 

All Along the Trail. By Sarah Gertrude Pomeroy. 
Children of the Lighthouse. By Charles L. White. 



THE CHILDREN 
OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


BY 

CHARLES LINCOLN WHITE, D.D. 

n 

Author of “ Prince and Uncle Billy." 


Illustrated by 
H. B. DUMMER 


Issued by the 

COUNCIL OF WOMEN FOR HOME MISSIONS 


Aaaorialtxm fraaa 

124 East 28th Street, New York 
1916 


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Copyright, 1916, By 
J. F. McTyikr 


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JUN -6 1916 


©CU4;$1382 



CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I Life at the Lighthouse i 

II Captain Anderson Talks About Cuba . 8 

III An Afternoon on a War-Ship . . . 15 

IV Writing to New Friends 21 

V More About Cuba 31 

VI Letters from the Palm Tree Land . . 40 

VII News from a Big City 47 

VIII A Surprise from Porto Rico .... 52 

IX Messages from Across the Sea .... 57 

X What Mexican Children See .... 62 

XI Mountain and Valley Children ... 69 

XII The Real Lighthouse Keepers ... 78 



























































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I! 4 






















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A WORD OF GREETING 


Many of us have often passed a lighthouse, sometimes 
in the daylight when it stood like a sturdy sentinel in bold, 
clear outline against the background of sky or land, some- 
times at night when the lighthouse itself was not to be 
seen at all, but only the beautiful strong beam that flashed 
out into the darkness, piercing it for miles around. A 
few of us have visited a lighthouse, and followed the 
faithful keeper up the long, dark, winding stair to where 
the great lamp is kept always ready for use. We can 
never forget the fine view from the tower, nor the lone- 
liness of it, and we cherish admiration for the brave peo- 
ple who are willing to spend summer and winter, year 
after year, through storm and sun, keeping the light. 

In this story all of us may have the delightful oppor- 
tunity of visiting and staying as long as we please with 
two children who live in a lighthouse far out from the 
shore, learning how the charms of nature crowd their 
days with pleasure, and discovering with them that 
“ where there’s a will there’s a way ” to find those whom 
we may help and encourage. 

Perhaps we shall learn, too, that in the life of every 
boy and girl may be, as it were, a lighthouse in which 
the lamp of truth shall burn so brightly as to direct 
every one who sees it into paths of safety, and harbors 
of peace and joy. If we do learn that, then we shall 
every one of us be Children of the Lighthouse. 

vii 



THE CHILDREN OF THE 
LIGHTHOUSE 


I 

LIFE AT THE LIGHTHOUSE 

'“'^OW be a good boy, Tom, and please 
sit down on this cushion and don’t 
look at that ship any longer. You 
have been gazing at ships all your 
life. I have been writing again in 
my diary, and if you will turn 
around and listen, I’ll read you a 
part of it.” 

As the good natured boy of ten years walked toward 
his sister, he said, “ Ruth, there is a strange look about 
that ship on the horizon, that makes me want to watch it ; 
but I will do as you say. Oh, Ruth,” he continued, “ you 
have one of those things on your face, that mother calls a 
frown. If writing in a diary will make me look like that, 
perhaps I shall often forget to do my part in keeping it 
with you.” 

“ Tom ! ” cried his sister, with a merry laugh. “ There ! 
See! I have thrown that frown away. Listen! Didn’t 
you hear it strike the water ? ” 

Her brother ran to the edge of the high wall, looked 

i 



2 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


down, and shouted, “Yes, the frown has just gone down 
for the third time. I hope a shark will get it, so it can 
never climb up the wall again.” 

This made Ruth, his twin sister, laugh more merrily, 
as she said : “ Oh, Tom, how happy we ought to be here 

in this dear old lighthouse ! I am sorry for the boys and 
girls who have to live on the land, so far from the ocean. 
How many wonderful things we have here, that they can 
never see ! The big light to shine all night, the silver 
moonlight on the ocean, and the stars that always seem 
so near the water. Yes, and we also have the little play- 
ground behind this high wall, and such wonderful views 
of the ships, the clouds, and the big storms, when the 
lightning strikes the water. And we mustn’t forget our 
little school all by ourselves, and Mother as our teacher.” 

“Yes,” added Tom, “very few children have their 
mother for a teacher and a school room in a lighthouse, 
with the waves under the windows singing all day long.” 

After her brother had said this, Ruth opened a little red 
book that lay in her lap, and began to read. Perhaps it 
was a strange way to begin, but this was what Tom 
heard : 

“ This is the first part of a diary Tom and I are to keep 
together, except when we forget to write in it. If I am 
too busy helping Mother or watching baby Paul, then Tom 
is to write that day. Tom is good to promise, but I ex- 
pect I shall have to do nearly all the writing.” 

“ Come, little Miss Ruth ! Please stop ! ” cried Tom. 
“ That isn’t the way to keep a diary. You ought to write, 
‘ It is a pleasant day. The wind blows hard. We had a 
good dinner. Ten ships passed and two flocks of wild 
geese. One steamer had a funny looking funnel. I 
didn’t get a whipping, but Ruth deserved one.’ ” 


LIFE AT THE LIGHTHOUSE 


3 


“ Be still, Tom/’ cried Ruth ; “ you will have your 
chance soon.” 

Then she began to read again : 

“ Tom and I were ten years old last Monday and we 
had a fine birthday party. We wrote letters to the whales 
and the porpoises and the sea gulls and tossed them out on 
the water. But our friends were too busy to come and 
get them. Father, Mother, baby Paul, Tom, and I were 
the only ones at the party. 

“We had a turkey dinner. Uncle Rufus sent the 
turkey with a large bag of cranberries and a box of 
brown eggs. The supply ship comes once in two weeks. 
It brings us our food and our letters ; yes, and the clothes 
Mother orders by sending letters to a big store in New 
York. 

“ Tom and I are very happy here in the lighthouse. 
Last week we had a hard storm on the ocean. The waves 
were very large and seemed angry as they chased each 
other past our home. The spray hit the pane of glass in 
the window near my bed, and the sea pounded against 
the high stone wall all night, but Tom and I were not 
afraid. I wonder if the sea of Galilee had such a hard 
storm, when Jesus said, ‘ Peace ! Be still ! ’ 

“ Tom and I have been on the land only twice in our 
lives. We went both times to visit Uncle Rufus and Aunt 
Clara on their farm. When we went first we thought we 
had been there before we were born. But Aunt Clara 
laughed and said, 4 No, my dears, but perhaps you have 
seen a picture of the house and the winding road leading 
up to it, and also the three waterfalls and the ponds near 
the barn.’ 

“ Oh, what fun it was to watch the hens climb into the 
nests and then hear them cackle, and after that to find 


4 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


the warm eggs beside the china one. Once, by mistake, 
we tried to boil the nest-egg and it exploded like a fire- 
cracker. But I would rather watch the sea gulls fly than 
see hens lay eggs. Tom and I know ten gulls by name. 
We were so glad to reach home again and smell the ocean 
and watch the birds flying around the lighthouse. ,, 



“ Why, Ruth,” exclaimed Tom, “ you have not counted 
Old Baldy, the giant gull we saw four times last Sunday 
afternoon.” 

“ Yes, that’s so. We know by name eleven sea gulls. 
I will change it in the diary. It isn’t fair to leave out 
Old Baldy. We must have this diary story true in each 
point too,” said Ruth. 

Then she began again and read: 

“ It was such fun when Uncle Rufus and Aunt Clara 
visited us last winter. They were so homesick for the 
old farm, and it made their eyes ache to look at the water, 


LIFE AT THE LIGHTHOUSE 


5 


and the sound of the waves kept them awake at night. 
The sound of the sea always makes us close our eyes. 
Mother says that when we were babies, she used to open 
the windows and let the waves and the sea gulls sing us 
to sleep. 

“ But two weeks later Aunt Clara cried when the boat 
came to take them away. She had to go with Uncle 
Rufus, because he was a teacher and he could not wait 
till the next boat came. He said if the boys had too long 
a vacation they might forget nearly all they had learned. 

“ I must go soon and rock Paul. He is nearly a year 
old, and is a darling. He was named for the Apostle 
Paul. I don’t believe that good man was a better baby 
than my little brother is. I wonder if he too was born 
in a lighthouse. Perhaps little Paul will become an 
apostle and a missionary also, when he grows up to be a 
big man. But I hope he won’t be an apostle, if that will 
keep him from being a lighthouse keeper. 

“ The Apostle Paul was shipwrecked once and was in 
the sea a night and all day. I pity people who are ship- 
wrecked. In an awful storm last winter, we saw a big 
ship with one side broken open. It was drifting past our 
lighthouse. The sailors were up in the rigging holding to 
the ropes, but we could not help them. We wondered if 
they had any boys and girls at home. The next day it 
was pleasant again and our supply ship saved all the men. 
We talked with them when the Captain brought us our 
letters. 

“ It is wonderful to have a father who is a lighthouse 
keeper. My father is a great man and I am sure he has 
one of the largest lighthouses in the world. Sometimes 
when it storms he keeps awake all night watching the big 
lamp, to be sure it burns brightly every minute. If it 


6 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


should burn low or go out, some sailors might be lost or 
even a steamship full of men and women and boys and 
girls might strike the reefs near our home.” 

“ Oh, Ruth, all this is fine. I could listen all day, and 
it is all true too. But what is there left for me to 
write ? ” 

“ There is plenty left for you, Tom. You have only to 
write what happens each day and I have only a little more 
to read.” 

Then she added : “ Mother went through college aad 

Father did, too. He was a pastor of a church on the 
land. Then he was very sick and came here to get well 
again. He loves to be a lighthouse keeper, but when Tom 
and I are grown up, he hopes he will be strong enough 
to be a minister again. I hope his new church will be 
near the college where we study. 

“ My mother speaks French and German, and Tom and 
I talk with her a little every day, in each of these lan- 
guages. Tom likes German better than French, but I like 
French better than German, and we both like English best 
of all. 

“ I have a cat. Her name is John G. Whittier. Tom 
and I named her after the great poet. I am sure he 
would not care, for she has a poetical purr. 

“ I have a dog, too. We call him Bobby. We have 
also a canary bird, a typewriter, a baby telephone, a music 
box, a phonograph, a lovely home and dear parents and 
a baby brother. We also have the stars and the clouds, 
and sea gulls and porpoises around the lighthouse. 

“ Mother says we are rich even if we’ve not much 
money. I am afraid other girls ten years old do not have 
as much as I do. I weigh ninety-eight pounds, am forty- 
four inches tall and wear a number three shoe. 


LIFE AT THE LIGHTHOUSE 


7 


“ Tom will write how tall he is and what he weighs, and 
about his shoes too, if he doesn’t forget it. I have never 
been in a dentist’s chair, and I never want to be there, 
even if it has a velvet cushion. I don’t wear gloves or 
rubbers, and have never had an umbrella nor a sun-shade 
and don’t want one. 

“ We never wear hats here at the lighthouse. Tom and 
I have not had the mumps or measles, or croup or chicken 
pox or earache or toothache, and we hope we never will 
have even one of them. We are both growing like sea- 
weeds, Father says.” 

At that moment they heard a loud whistle and both 
children leaped to their feet to see where the sound came 
from. And there, a half mile from the lighthouse, they 
saw a great war-ship, and their father was answering the 
Captain’s signals. 

A moment later he called : “ Children, the Captain of 

the war-ship is an old friend of Uncle Rufus, and is to 
make us a little visit. He will come in his launch. He 
was in the battle of Santiago and will surely tell us about 
the missions in Cuba. Captain Anderson is an earnest 
Christian and has been all over that beautiful island.” 

“ Hurrah ! ” cried Tom. “ What a happy day ! See ! 
The little boat is coming swiftly toward the lighthouse ! ” 


II 


CAPTAIN ANDERSON TALKS ABOUT CUBA 

S they all stood watching the launch 
coming rapidly toward them, their 
father called to the children : 
“ The Captain is a good man. His 
father was a missionary to the In- 
dians and he knows many wonder- 
ful stories about the Red Men. I 
met him often, when I was a boy, 
and remember very well the day when he went away to 
study at Annapolis and learn to be a naval officer. He 
is one of the best Christian men in the Navy, and is very 
kind to all whom he meets. I have been told that his 
sailors and officers love him. But I have not seen him 
for many years. For a long time he has been in Euro- 
pean waters. I wonder how he knew I was here at the 
light.” 

Nearer and nearer the boat came, and at last Captain 
Anderson shouted through a megaphone which he held to 
his mouth : “ Hello, there ! How do you do, Mr. Light- 

house Keeper? Watch out! If you don’t, the Indians 
will get you.” 

Then he laughed and the children’s father waved a 
salute and shouted : “ I see you are the same old boy, 

Captain.” 



8 


THE CAPTAIN TALKS ABOUT CUBA 9 

“Yes,” came the answer, “and how are the children? 
How do you do, Ruth, Tom, Paul, and Mother? ” 

“ How do you know our names ? ” cried Ruth. 

Oh, that is a secret,” he answered, as he climbed up 
the iron ladder that reached from the water to the top 
of the wall. “ I know all about you.” 

In a moment they had grasped his strong hand, and 
then, all talking at once, walked to the little room under 
the light. They had hardly seated themselves, when 
Captain Anderson leaped to his feet again, seized Tom 
and stood him on his head, then let him topple over on 
the floor. Before her brother knew what had happened, 
the big visitor swung Ruth around the room a dozen 
times and dropped her on the sofa, laughing. Then he 
held his hands out to Paul, who jumped in his eagerness 
to leave his mother’s lap. 

“ Well,” said their new friend, holding Paul in his 
arms, “ these children must all call me Uncle Jack. I 
have long been hungry for a sight of boys and girls. 
I have three, but have not seen them for two years. I 
am just going home from Europe, where my ship has 
been visiting the ports of Italy, France, Spain, England, 
Holland, and Germany. Let me see! My twins must 
be nearly the same age as Tom and Ruth are. They 
were ten years old two weeks ago last Wednesday, and 
the baby will be four years old tomorrow. I wonder how 
many teeth he has.” 

“ How strange ! ” cried the mother. “ Our twins were 
born the same year and had their birthday party last 
Monday.” 

“ Why,” said the Captain, “ that is wonderful, and we 
must have our children become acquainted. Richard and 
Clarissa are the twins. All the family live in Brooklyn, 


10 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


New York, and this card tells the street and number of 
the house. They are great letter writers, and will be glad 
to correspond with Ruth and Tom. ,, 

After a long talk about the days when the visitor often 
met their father out in the Indian country, they all sat 
down at the dinner table, which Ruth and her mother had 
arranged. Before they began to eat, however, the light- 
house keeper asked Captain Anderson to pray for God’s 
blessing on the food. 

After dinner, they all went out on the long wall and 
sat in chairs that the children brought from the house. 

“ How long can you stay ? ” asked the lighthouse 
keeper. “ Excuse me, please, for asking, but I am anx- 
ious that you should tell the children about Cuba and the 
missions there, before you go back to the ship.” 

“ Oh, I can stay till sunset and that will let me sail 
into the harbor on the full tide soon after midnight. Yes, 
indeed, I shall be glad to tell the children about Cuba — 
at least all I know about it. I haven’t been there for 
several years. I was one of the naval officers in the 
battle of Santiago, but that story is not what I must tell 
you today. 

“ Cuba was discovered,” said Uncle Jack, “ by Colum- 
bus on the 26th of October, 1492, and he took possession 
of it at Nuevitas on the northern coast. Columbus 
thought he had reached Asia, the land of riches. The 
great man soon went away to discover other lands, and 
not long after returned to Spain to tell about Cuba and 
all the other places he had seen. 

“ In 1508, the Spaniards found out that Cuba was only 
an island, for one of their ships sailed all around it, and 
came back to the place from which it started. That was 
a great surprise. Three years after Columbus went 


THE CAPTAIN TALKS ABOUT CUBA 


ii 


away, a rich man, whose name was Velasquez, was sent 
by the son of Columbus to conquer and to make Cuba into 
a Spanish colony. He built a town and called it Baracoa, 
at the eastern end of the Island. 

“ The natives of this wonderful country were Indians. 
Cuba was divided into nine parts. These parts were 
called provinces, and each had one Indian chief to rule 
it. We do not know what their laws were, but they did 
not have wars with one another, or with the Indians of 
other islands. They loved peace and were timid. They 
liked to dance to their rude music. The best thing I 
know about them is that they were glad to receive the 
story of the Saviour, told to them by their Spanish con- 
querors, just as the Cubans now believe the Gospel the 
missionaries take to them. Of course all the Indians 
didn’t believe what they said about God’s love, and all the 
Cubans now do not accept as their own the salvation that 
Christ brought to the world. 

“ But the Spaniards were very cruel to the trustful 
Indians, and for four hundred years they did not stop 
abusing these poor people who lived on the Island. In 
1518 the Spaniards built a large church at Baracoa, which 
was made a city that year. Havana, now the largest city 
on the Island, was founded in 1519, seven years after 
Baracoa was built. This was one hundred and one years 
before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. In 1522, 
Santiago, another city, had grown to be so large that it 
became the capital instead of Baracoa. If you see where 
Nuevitas, Baracoa, Santiago, and Havana are, you will 
have four good points to mark on the map. You must 
learn to draw a map of Cuba and put each of these four 
cities down with a dot and a little circle around it, to 
show they were important places. 


12 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


“ Some of the Indians would not believe in the Chris- 
tian religion, because the Spaniards, who said they loved 
God, were so cruel to them. One of these Indians was 
called Chief Hatuey. He fought long and hard to save 
his people, but Velasquez, the first Governor sent there 
by the son of Columbus, gave orders to have this great 
Indian burned alive in order to punish him for fighting 
the Spaniards. The brave man was told that he could go 
to heaven, if he would become a Christian. He at once 
asked if there would be any Spaniards in heaven. When 
he was told there would be many Spaniards in heaven, 
then the old chief Hatuey said, ‘ I don’t want to go there.’ 

“ In those early days and during the centuries since, 
there have been many wars, when the Cubans tried to be 
free. Twice the Spaniards were attacked in Cuba by the 
French and once by the English, who captured Havana. 
The Cubans many times fought hard battles to drive out 
the Spaniards. When they could not fight them in bat- 
tle, they set fire to their houses and corn fields. One 
war lasted ten years, but each revolution failed until 
the final war of liberation, when the Cuban people became 
free. 

“ This war began in 1895. The people were suffering 
and thousands were starving because the Spanish soldiers 
were very cruel to them, and so on April 11, 1898, Presi- 
dent' McKinley asked Congress to try to stop the awful 
troubles. The war was soon ended, and a treaty of peace 
was signed in Paris on December 10, 1899. Cuba was 
then free. 

“ Our soldiers stayed on the Island for awhile and our 
government taught the Cuban people what freedom 
meant. They also taught them how to build good roads 
and bridges, and keep their cities clean, so that the people 


THE CAPTAIN TALKS ABOUT CUBA 13 


would not have yellow fever and other dangerous dis- 
eases. The officers of the United States built good 
schools for the Cubans and enlarged the postal and tele- 
graph systems. Better laws were also made and put into 
force. On May 20, 1902, the new Cuban government 
took control ; and this day is called the * Cuban Independ- 
ence Day/ ” 

“ Is that the same as our Fourth of July ? ” asked Tom. 

“ Yes, just the same,” said Uncle Jack, and continued : 

" A few years later the Cuban government was afraid 
there would be another revolution, and their President, 
in 1906, asked the United States to help Cuba again. 
Some wise men from the United States went to Cuba and 
gave its President and his friends good advice. On Janu- 
ary 28, 1909, the Cuban people chose a new President, 
and since then, have governed themselves without many 
difficulties. 

“ There are many missionaries who preach the Gospel 
in Cuba. And there are schools and hospitals, too, on the 
Island. Four years ago I went to Havana, El Cristo, and 
Santiago, where there are wonderful schools. 

“ Oh, children, I will tell you what to do. Send a let- 
ter to my friend who lives near Santiago, and ask him 
to have some of the children in the mission schools write 
you letters. You can tell him that I asked you to do this. 
Be sure and promise to write a letter about the light- 
house, and send a little picture of it to each Cuban girl 
or boy who writes you a letter. 

“ My friend will tell the Cuban children what to write 
about. The Cuban boys and girls are very dear children. 
Many of them love and serve Christ, and they will write 
to you all about their homes and games and their schools.” 

“ Oh, what a fine plan ! ” cried Ruth. 


14 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


“ We will write the letter tomorrow,” said Tom. 

“ Good,” said Uncle Jack. “ Do it,” and he added, 
“ Toward sunset, I will signal an officer to come and 
guard the lighthouse, and you all, yes, even the baby, must 
go with me to the ship and take dinner with me in my 
cabin. Then I will tell you a real Indian missionary 
story.” 

All through the afternoon they talked and laughed, and 
at last they were ready to make the trip across the water. 
The Captain’s first officer had been signaled to come in 
another boat, and was now with them. Then they went 
away with Uncle Jack. 

Soon the lighthouse seemed a long way off, and the 
war-ship grew very large as they came nearer. Suddenly 
Ruth said : 

“ Uncle Jack, you haven’t told us yet how you knew we 
lived here, .and how you knew our names too.” 

“ I will tell you now,” he answered. “ Uncle Rufus 
wrote me your names, and yesterday I sent a wireless 
message to Washington, and a reply came in about an 
hour, telling me just where you lived. It happened to be 
in the direction I must sail in order to reach the land, so 
I kept a look-out for my new friends. 

“ But remember you and Tom are to send that letter 
to Cuba.” 


Ill 


AN AFTERNOON ON A WAR-SHIP 



ERY soon Uncle Jack and his friend 
were climbing up the brass covered 
stairs on the side of the big ship and 
were on its clean deck, where every- 
thing was strange to the children 
and their parents. The sailors sa- 
luted the Captain, and the visitors 
* were at once introduced to several 

officers and felt very much at home. 

While Tom and Ruth were looking at many strange 
things, the mascot of the ship bounded up to them. This 
was a large St. Bernard dog called Tiger, that soon was 
their firm friend. He came up with such a bound that 
he almost knocked Tom over, but at once the dog held 
up his right paw to shake hands, and he even stood up on 
his hind legs and then tried to shake hands with baby 
Paul. 

While this was happening, the Captain asked a young 
officer to take Tom and Ruth around the ship, show them 
everything, and answer all their questions. In a few 
minutes the children found themselves down in the en- 
gine room with their guide, and then in the kitchens, and 
after that, they looked into the big guns and even put 
their hands on the wheel that steered the ship. 

i5 


16 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


A half hour later, when their kind guide led them to 
the Captain’s cabin, Uncle Jack asked if Tom and Ruth 
had been bashful about their questions. The children 
were silent and the officer said: “ No, sir, they take the 
first prize for questions, and Ruth can beat Tom two to 
one. The only question I couldn’t answer was, ‘ What 
do you do for Tiger if he is sea-sick ? ’ ” 

This made the Captain laugh. “We should like to 
have the children’s guide dine with us, and dinner is now 
ready in my cabin,” he said. 

The young officer had never eaten with the Captain be- 
fore, and was very happy to have the chance to do so and 
especially with the children, with whom he had fallen in 
love. It was a delightful dinner party. Before they sat 
down, Captain Anderson asked the lighthouse keeper to 
ask God’s blessing. After that the colored waiters served 
soup, fish, chicken, sweet potatoes, and many kinds of 
strange fruits and nuts that Tom and Ruth had never 
tasted. Last of all came the ice cream, which was the 
greatest treat and surprise of the whole day. The chil- 
dren could not understand how ice cream could be made 
on a war-ship. 

When the dinner came to an end and the children had 
had three servings of ice cream, Uncle Jack walked to a 
shelf. “ Here Tom, is a book called ‘ The American In- 
dian on the New Trail!’” he said. “In this you will 
find many facts about the Indians. I would like to give 
this to you, if you will promise to read it and write me 
a good letter about the Indians, so that my children may 
hear it.” 

Tom was delighted with the book, and almost before he 
could say, “ Thank you,” Uncle Jack said : “ And here 
is a little book called ‘ Goodbird, the Indian.’ I want to 


AN AFTERNOON ON A WAR-SHIP 


17 


give it to you, Ruth, and I know you will enjoy it very 
much. ,, 

Ruth was very happy to receive the present, and thanked 
the Captain many times. Tom promised to read the book 
at once and to write the best letter he could to the giver. 
“ But can’t Richard and Clarissa write to us too ? ” he 
asked. 

“ Yes,” replied Uncle Tom, “ they will certainly write 
you a long letter about themselves and the little foreign 
boys and girls in Brooklyn, who go to their Sunday school 
and mission band. Richard and Clarissa will tell you all 
about the children in these poor homes, and these foreign 
boys and girls will also, I believe, write letters, and give 
them to my children to send to you.” 

“ Hurrah ! ” shouted Tom. “ That will be fine. We 
shall have letters then from Cuba and from the foreign 
children on the land.” 

“Yes,” said the Captain, “you ought to write also to 
the missionaries in Mexico, Porto Rico, New Mexico, 
California, Colorado, Arizona, and other places where 
thousands of Mexican children live. You will get many 
wonderful letters from these children, and perhaps you 
can also get them from other mission schools. Your 
mother can tell you the names of the missionaries who 
teach in the schools among the mountain people, and 
among the colored people of the South. These children 
could write you good letters if they were asked to do so.” 

“ Can we do this, Mother ? ” asked the children, with 
one voice, “and send them pictures of the lighthouse 
too?” 

“ We will try to do it,” -said their mother, “ but how can 
we write so many letters, and where can we get all the 
pictures of the lighthouse, my children ? ” 


i8 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


“ Oh, that is easy,” cried Uncle Jack. “ I have been 
looking around the cabin to see what presents I can give 
to the children, and I find two things that will help you to 
write the letters and make the pictures also. Here is a 
camera that I bought in Germany, and a box filled with 
everything you will need to make pictures. I want to 
give that to Tom as a present from Clarissa. And I 
have something else — a typewriter — and also a box with 
wax sheets and a little machine to make clear copies of all 
the letters. Oh, I have found one thing more — a big 
box of paper, and about two hundred envelopes. These 
are a present from Richard to Ruth.” 

“ Oh, Uncle Jack, you are such a dear to give us so 
many things,” said Ruth, as she danced for joy, around 
the room, with Tom almost standing on his head as he 
followed her ; “ Clarissa and Richard ought to have all 
these presents.” 

“ No,” answered the good man, “ they will have a great 
many presents that are in a big trunk down in the ship.” 

“ Oh, thank you a hundred times,” shouted Tom. 

“ Yes, a thousand times,” added Ruth. 

“ It is too bad to have to leave such a lovely place,” 
said the children’s mother, “ but I am sure it is now time 
to return to the lighthouse, because the sun will soon set, 
and Uncle Jack must be starting the big ship toward the 
shore.” 

A few minutes later, as they stood at the side of the 
ship, the Captain gave a signal and all the sailors ran 
up the rigging, stood up with joined hands, and gave three 
cheers for the visitors. This greatly excited Tom and 
Ruth, who had one more big surprise when the band began 
to play, “ Nearer my God to Thee.” This was followed 
by, “ Let the Lower Lights be Burning,” and after that, 


AN AFTERNOON ON A WAR-SHIP 


i9 


as the men all removed their hats, the band played, “ My 
Country ’Tis of Thee/’ 

Then the Captain went home with his friends, and had 
several sailors go along to lift the bundles of presents out 
of the launch and carry them up the ladder to the light- 
house. When they all stood again on the wall, where the 
children sat when they saw the ship, they looked back 
upon a very pleasant afternoon. 

The packages were carried into the house, and a few 
minutes after that, good-bys were said; soon they were 



alone, and watching Uncle Jack hurrying back in the 
launch to the ship. A half hour later, they stood on the 
wall to see the war-ship start. When it sailed away, an 
officer waved two flags and the father read this message, 
repeating it to his family : 

“ Uncle Jack will expect that letter soon. Richard and 
Clarissa will surely write to Tom and Ruth. Perhaps 
they will all four go to the same college. Good-by, baby 
Paul and Mother and Father and Ruth and Tom and 
Bobby and all the pets and the dear old lighthouse! J 
will surely visit you again sometime, and perhaps before. 


20 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


another summer. We have had a happy time together, 
and must try to have many more such afternoons when 
Richard and Clarissa and our baby and their mother can 
all be with us. God be with you till we meet again.” 

Then the big whistle gave two long blasts, and the ship 
rapidly sailed away. The children watched it pass out of 
sight below the horizon. Soon their mother took Paul 
to bed, and their father lighted the big lamp as the sun 
dipped below the water. 

“ Oh, what a happy day we have had ! ” shouted Ruth, 
as she ran into the house, followed by Tom. 

Of course the children were curious to see what was in 
the bundles, and even their mother said : “ What can all 

these things be, do you suppose, children? We must 
untie the bundles very carefully so that nothing will be 
broken, and save the string. Roll it up very carefully, 
for we shall need it and the paper too, some day.” 

Soon the camera and the typewriter were standing on 
the table, and Tom and Ruth looked at them with open 
eyes. While they were peering into their new presents, 
their mother untied the other strange packages, and a 
moment later their father opened the box containing play- 
things for Paul. Then they found six books of foreign 
travel, and three French and three German books. In an- 
other bundle was a large box of chocolates made in Ger- 
many, marked, “ From Uncle Jack.” The last bundle 
was shaped like a big cage, and in it they were surprised 
to find a parrot. When they saw the red and yellow little 
creature, the children danced wildly and laughed, as it 
said: “ How do you do, dear friends? Polly likes 
crackers. Do you ? ” 


IV 


WRITING TO NEW FRIENDS 



HE next morning, Tom jumped 
out of bed when the clock was 
striking six, and a few mo- 
{ ments later Ruth ran out to 
the end of the wall, where 
she and her brother often sat 
in the early morning. Tom 
was already reading the book 


about the Indians which Uncle Jack gave him. When 
his sister reached their corner in the wall, he looked up 
and said : “ Why, Ruth ! I must go back at once to my 

room. I was in such a hurry to read this new book that 
I forgot to read my morning chapter in the Bible and to 
say my prayers.” 

“ Why ! ” exclaimed Ruth, “ I was so excited, I for- 
got too.” 

A few minutes later they had returned to their seats 
on the wall and Ruth was soon very busy writing in her 
diary. While her brother was reading, she looked up and 
said : “ It is your turn to write in the diary today, 

Tom, but I am afraid that book will keep you from doing 
it. We have an hour before breakfast and then an hour 
after breakfast until school begins again. Our vacation 
of one week ends today, you know, but I fear Mother 
almost dreads to begin to teach us this morning.” 


21 


22 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


Just then the door of the sitting room opened and 
their mother called : “ Children, you can have another 

week of vacation and we will all work on the letters, get 
them written and the envelopes addressed, so that the 
supply ship one week from today can take them all away 
with it. Soon the letters will be hurrying in the mail 
bags to Porto Rico, Cuba, Mexico, and to all the other 
places. Are you willing to have a longer vacation ? ” 

Tom and Ruth leaped to their feet dancing with joy. 
Then they ran to the lighthouse, kissed their mother and 
Tom answered: “ Willing? Perhaps Ruth wants school 
this week, but I can get along without it, although you 
are the best teacher in the world, Mother. ,, 

Ruth stood there laughing too, and a few minutes later 
their mother went to get baby Paul who was crying, and 
sent the children back to their place on the wall. Then 
Ruth wrote in her diary : 

“ Captain Anderson is my newest Uncle. He asked 
Tom and me to call him Uncle Jack. The war-ship party 
and the presents were the best we have ever had. Meet- 
ing Uncle Jack makes me want to be a true Christian and 
to be a missionary to the Indians or to the Cubans or to 
the people somewhere, when I grow up to be a woman. 
We have a parrot now, that Uncle Jack gave us. Our 
new friend is very quiet this morning. Perhaps he is 
homesick for the war-ship. I am now going to write to 
Clarissa and Richard,” and this was her letter. 

Dear Richard and Clarissa: 

Tom and I fell in love with your father and we call 
him “ Uncle Jack.” We want you to come and visit us 
at the lighthouse and your father says you may. Be 
sure and come so that you can be with us next Fourth 
of July and stay as long as you can. Last year we had 


WRITING TO NEW FRIENDS 


23 


a great Fourth. Tom and I fired torpedoes and fire- 
crackers nearly all day. Early in the morning a tired 
sea-gull flew into a hole in the wall under the light and 
Father climbed down by holding to a rope and brought 
the bird up to us. One of its wings was badly hurt. 
Mother put it in a basket in a warm place near the 
kitchen stove, and we fed it little bits of meat and dried 
fish. Just before sunset the little visitor seemed so 
bright that we put the basket up on the wall, near the 
place where it came to us in the morning. We stood in 
the doorway and watched it. When it saw that it was 
alone, our little friend jumped out of the basket, walked 
along the wall and then sailed away over the water. 

One very dark night a beautiful red-breasted bird 
flew against the lighthouse window. Mother said the 
little dear was going up north for the summer. It 
seemed to be dead, but it wasn’t. It stayed in our 
basket nearly a week and was so tame that it would eat 
little pieces of a boiled egg out of our hands. When we 
let it go one morning it flew toward the north, just as 
though it knew the way. 

I asked Father how such a little bird could go all alone 
across the ocean when it couldn’t see the land. He told 
me, God gave every little bird an instinct. Mother thinks 
this is a kind of a voice in the bird’s heart that whispers 
and tells it the way to go, just as He has given us the 
little voice of conscience in our souls to teach us what 
is right and what is wrong. 

The sea is very blue today and I love to look at it. 
There is not a cloud in sight. Last Fourth of July was 
about a third as long as I wish it had been. I must now 
find the cat and the dog and get the parrot his breakfast 
and then go up to the light and visit Father. Tom and 
I read a chapter in the Bible with Mother every evening, 
then have our prayers and go to bed and dream of the 
day we were homesick when we visited Uncle Rufus and 
Aunt Clara. 

Our beds are near the window and the sweet air blows 
through the room. I can look up at the stars and I love 


24 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


to watch them twinkle as they seem to wink at me. I 
tried to count them last night but I was asleep before I 
reached fifteen. 

The next thing I knew the sea-gulls were calling for 
their breakfast and Bobby was barking at the big ocean 
steamship that was sailing past the light. Then the 
cat jumped on the bed at my feet. I kept very quiet 
while it walked up slowly and put its paw on my cheek. 
It does this almost every morning. It raps with its claws 
on the window when it wants to come in, and it can open 
the door from the inside by standing up on its hind legs 
and pushing the latch down with its paw. I have never 



seen a cat do this before. I am sure I have a prize cat. 

I wish the glorious Fourth came oftener, and I pity the 
boys and girls that celebrate it on the hot and dusty land 
far away from the ocean. 

On Sundays we have church at ten o’clock. First, we 
have sacred music on the phonograph and a solo “ Jeru- 
salem the Golden ” or “ Jesus Lover of my Soul ” or some 
other beautiful hymn. Then Father reads a chapter in 
the Bible and prays. After that, Mother reads a poem 
and sings a solo, just before Father preaches a short 
sermon. Mother always plays on the piano that her 
college classmates gave to her and then the meeting ends. 


WRITING TO NEW FRIENDS 


25 


I forgot to write that Tom always passes the col- 
lection box after we say the Lord’s Prayer. We shake 
hands too, just as they do on shore in the churches, when 
Father says the benediction. I asked Mother two years 
ago if it was all right to bring in Bobby and the cat to 
the service. Since then they come to meeting every Sun- 
day, and with Baby Paul and all of us we have a crowd, 
we think. Bobby sits in a chair but the cat almost always 
goes to sleep in her chair before the meeting ends. 

In the afternoon we have Sunday school at three 
o’clock and Mother is our teacher. Father is the superin- 
tendent. After supper we always read a chapter from 
the Story of the Bible and look at the pictures, telling 
Mother what we see in them. We often also look at the 
faces in the old family albums and read the names on the 
front leaves of the big Bible and find the days those dear 
old people were born and when they died. 

It is beautiful Sunday evenings when the sea is smooth 
and the wind is warm and the sea-gulls are flying around 
my window. We love to sit on the wall and see the big 
moon come up out of the ocean. We don’t have to do any 
dusting in our home. Mother says a lighthouse is the 
cleanest place in the world. 

At that moment Tom gave a shout and leaped to his 
feet as his sister cried: “Tom, Tom, are you crazy?” 

He laughed, answering, “ No, not a bit crazy, Ruth, 
but this Indian book is a very fine one, and the -most ex- 
citing book I ever read. I will have to let out a war- 
whoop once in a while, or the buttons on my coat will 
snap off and that will make more work for you or Mother. 
I want to read every page and every word and finish it 
as soon as possible, because I must write Uncle Jack that 
letter about the Indians.” 

“ Yes, of course, you must keep your promise to Uncle 
Jack, but we have to write that letter to the mission chil- 
dren, now.” 


26 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 

It was a very busy day for the children of the light- 
house. Tom read his new book and Ruth, with her 
mother’s help, wrote the letter which must be copied and 
sent to so many places. The parrot soon began to talk 
again and made them laugh when he said : “ Bobby, you 

are a naughty dog, a very bad dog. Have a bone, 
Tiger?” 

“ O,” said Ruth, “ that is what he used to cry on the 
ship. Tiger was the name of that big dog. Bobby has 
two names now.” But Bobby did not care, and ran off to 
sleep in his big box down near the playground behind 
the wall. 

The next morning Tom wrote this letter to Captain 
Anderson : 

Dear Uncle Jack: 

It seems strange to have another Uncle, but Ruth and 
I love you. The Indian book is the best one I own and 
I want to thank you again for it. I have read it care- 
fully. Nearly all day yesterday it was in my hands. I 
find many wonderful stories and new things in it which 
I’ll write about next time. 

Please tell Richard and Clarissa that we very much 
want them to visit us here at the lighthouse next sum- 
mer. We hope you can come with them and bring all 
the family too. We have a big tent that we sometimes 
pitch on the playground. Richard and I can sleep there. 
Perhaps you think our lighthouse is a little one, but there 
are many rooms in it and more than you know about. 

Please ask the children to write soon and give them our 
love. Please have the little missionary children also 
write to us. Perhaps Richard and Clarissa can send 
these letters when they write to us. We can hardly wait 
to hear from them and from the mission children. This 
letter can’t go away in the supply ship until five days 
from now. 


WRITING TO NEW FRIENDS 


27 


The presents were wonderful. Mother and Father are 
very much pleased with their books. The typewriter is a 
beauty. The chocolate was the sweetest we have ever 
had. The parrot is fine and talks like a wise bird, Mother 
says. All your presents have made us very happy. 
Ruth, Mother, Father, Paul, send their love to you. 
The candy is almost all eaten. The parrot calls our dog 
Tiger. We all say that the day you were here was the 
happiest one we have ever had at the lighthouse. 

Your loving friend, 

Tom. 

After dinner they all sat on the wall and Ruth read to 
the family the letter that she and her mother had written 
to be sent to the mission children. Ruth had done nearly 
all of it, but her mother told her how to change some of 
the sentences. 

The cat and Bobby seemed to know that something 
wonderful was happening, and many times they put their 
paws on the paper near the typewriter, while the parrot 
called loudly from the open window. It was a beautiful 
day, and ‘great white clouds were floating over the ocean 
Even Paul listened while Ruth read the letter : 

At the Lighthouse, 

Dear Friends : 

We have formed a Mission Band at our lighthouse. 
We live very far out in the ocean and cannot see the 
shore, but we love to live here with the water all around 
our home. 

We would so like to have you come and speak at our 
mission band and join it too. If you will write us a 
letter we will make you an absent member or an honor- 
ary member, as father says. There are only two chil- 
dren in our band now, Tom and I, but we have never had 
any one absent. Tom is the president of the mission 
band and I am the secretary and treasurer. We have 


28 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


two dollars and eight cents in our mission box. If you 
will send us a letter in care of the lighthouse department, 
Washington, D. C., I’m sure we’ll get it. We hope to 
learn what kind of a house you live in and what your 
games are. 

Do you go to a day school and to a Sunday school 
also, and do you have a Junior band? Of course you 
love the Lord and are trying to serve Him just as we 
are, out here in the lighthouse. We hope that you al- 
ways keep your Christian lamp well trimmed and burning 
brightly. Father says the government inspector may 
come any day and any hour, and so he must always keep 
the lighthouse lamp in perfect condition. He says too, 
that we never know when our Lord may come also to see 
if our lamps are clean and are giving a good light. 

If you can’t read English, Mother says your mission- 
ary will gladly read this letter to you, and write to us, 
for you, in English. 

It seems very wonderful that so many boys and girls in 
a great many places love the same Saviour, pray every day 
in His name, and read the same Bible. Tom and I have 
loved the Lord ever since we can remember, but last 
Easter after our Sunday morning service, we both felt 
that we ought to serve Him better. We gave our lives to 
Christ again that day, and asked Him to forgive us for 
all of our sins. It was something in the sermon that 
made us both feel the same way. Father and Mother 
prayed that morning in the service and then we prayed 
too. It is hard to explain just what happened, but we 
can only say that from that Easter morning we have been 
trying harder than we did before to do everything that 
we can to please the Lord. We want to grow up and 
get others to love Him also. 

Mother and I send some money each year to the 
“ Woman’s Missionary Society ” and we all divide the 
rest of our gifts on Sunday among the other societies. 
Tom and I have twenty cents a week to spend as we wish. 
We give one tenth of it each Sunday, and Father and 
Mother give one tenth of all the money they receive from 


WRITING TO NEW FRIENDS 


29 


the Government. After they have given a tenth they 
sometimes give more. They call this a free will offering 
and they say that a tenth belongs to God first of all. We 
do not chew gum and there are no stores here to get 
our pennies. We often wonder if soda tastes good. 

Mother says that prayer is our speaking to God, and 
when we read the Bible then God is speaking to us. This 
is too long a letter, Father says, but please remember 
your letters can’t be too long to suit us. Will you write 
soon and tell us of yourselves? Then we will vote you 
into our Mission Band at the next meeting after your 
letter reaches the lighthouse. We have a meeting once in 
three weeks, at two o’clock on Saturday afternoons. 

Your true friends, 

Tom and Ruth Dodge. 

Several days later when the supply ship came it took 
away the largest number of letters that the Captain had 
ever seen. He brought the lighthouse family a letter 
from Uncle Rufus and one from Aunt Clara. They re- 
ceived also four boxes of provisions. The following 
morning school began again and the next two weeks flew 
by quickly. The morning before the supply ship came 
again, Ruth wrote in her diary : 

“ Tom hasn’t begun to write in this little book ; he is 
reading for the fourth time the book about the Indians, 
and I haven’t written one word in my diary for four 
days. 

“ Tom and I can hardly wait for the letters to come 
from the mission children and from Richard and Clarissa, 
but Mother says we must be patient.” 

When she had finished this, Tom called out from the 
open window : “ Ruth ! Ruth ! Down near the wall in 

front of you a big shark is sleeping — I can see his fins 
above the water, and some porpoises are playing not far 


3 o THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


away also. Look quickly ! There are a lot of flying fish 
passing the end of the wall, and Old Baldy, the big sea- 
gull, is coming toward us. He has been away a long 
time.” 




V 


MORE ABOUT CUBA 

HE next Saturday afternoon was a 
very pleasant day, and at the usual 
hour the Lighthouse Mission Band 
had its regular meeting. After 
Ruth had read the records they 
sang, “ Let the Lower Lights be 
Burning,” and then another hymn, 
which was Tom’s favorite, 
“ Throw Out The Life Line.” Tom always sang the 
verses of this alone, and Ruth and her mother joined in 
the chorus. Their mother read aloud the thirteenth chap- 
ter of the Acts of the Apostles and explained how St. 
Paul and Barnabas began their first great missionary 
journey. 

Not far away from the place on the wall where they 
were sitting, Bobby and the cat that they had just re- 
named Betsey, were sitting and looking out to sea. These 
pets often sat on the wall and gazed at the waves. Betsey 
was very fond of watching the clouds sail by, and Bobby 
had a funny way of barking as soon as he saw a ship lift 
its head above the horizon. It seemed as if he wanted to 
say : “ Look ! Look ! Look ! I see a sail and I hope 

it will come this way.” That morning very early he 
heard a dog barking on a ship that passed near the light, 
and he became so excited that it was a long time before 

3i 



32 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


he stopped whining. He had not seen a dog since he was 
a puppy and came from Uncle Rufus’ farm. 

All during the hour of the Mission Band meeting, the 
waves were breaking gently against the high wall and 
seemed to be singing a little song of their own. After 
their mother finished the reading of the chapter and had 
told the children the story of the first missionary journey, 
she said: 

“ This afternoon we will have the wonderful story of 
the Island of Cuba. I have been reading a very interest- 
ing book that tells all about it. It was written by Dr. 
Grose and published a few years ago by the Woman’s 
Home Mission Societies. When I have told you the 
story, I think each of you had better read the part of the 
book that I will mark.” 

In the afternoon as they sat on the wall, she related 
this story: 

“ The Cubans are people whose parents were born in 
Spain. Many other people live on the island, such as 
Chinese, Negroes and some Americans. In 1907 there 
were, according to the government census, 1,240,000 
Cubans, but the other people numbered nearly 800,000 
more. Of this last group about 200,000 were whites, 
and all but a few thousand of these were born in Spain. 
Of the rest a few more than 6,700 were born in the 
United States. There were also about 335,000 of mixed 
blood and 275,000 pure Negroes. There were nearly 12,- 
000 Chinese and all of these men and boys, except 196. 

“ There are about as many people in Cuba as there are 
in California or in the three states of Connecticut, New 
Hampshire, and Rhode Island. The island is about as 
large as Kentucky. The Spaniards own nearly all of the 
stores, manage the banks and almost all of the factories. 


MORE ABOUT CUBA 


33 


They live in Cuba to make money, but very many of them 
return to Spain when they have become rich, and don’t 
like to become citizens of the new republic. Many poor 
young men come each year from Spain, because in Cuba 
there is a good chance for them to rise in business. 

“ The Negroes and the mixed people not only work in 
the mills, but are blacksmiths, farmers, and carpenters ; in 
the sugar fields and coffee plantations, they are side by 
side with the white people, and receive the same wages 
for they are just as skilful. 

“ The Cuban women have to work hard, and very little 
chance is given them to get a good education. They be- 
gin to toil early in life and have but few of its comforts, 
and are generally married when very young. If they can 
afford to do so, they have servants instead of doing the 
work themselves, for they are ashamed to work if they 
have money to hire some one else to do it for them. 

“ The men feel the same way also and the people are 
ashamed to carry even a little package in the street. 
When they buy anything at a store they ask to have it 
sent to their homes. The women sew a little; very few 
of them sew well, but they are fond of crocheting. 
More than half of them have never learned to read, and 
most of them care little about it. 

“ In the cities, the people nearly all live in low houses 
of one story, but some of them have fine houses and high 
ones. In the tiny balconies of some, the women sit and 
watch the people passing by. They generally have a big 
front room which is used as a parlor, and behind this is 
another room that often opens into a garden or a little 
court called the patio. On one side of this the house be- 
comes narrow and there is a line of several rooms. These 
are used for sleeping and one of them, sometimes two, 


34 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 

for a kitchen and work room. Flowers and fruit trees 
often grow in the patio and very many of the patios have 
a fountain. 

“ There are no windows to the houses but iron rods 
are fastened to the sides ; through these people often look 
as they go by on the sidewalks. The Cuban people do 
not consider this impolite. Some of the iron rods are 
covered with beautiful curtains and bright colors are seen 
everywhere, especially in clothes, and the painting of 
rooms and houses. The roofs are often covered with 
green or red tiles, and the floors have another kind of tile 
with pretty figures and colors. 

“ In the cities the people are often very poor, and 
sometimes the children wear little clothing or none at all, 
while in the country, even on the colder days they play 
around the house and on the sidewalks and in the fields 
without being troubled with any clothes. 

“If horses are kept, the stable is at the lower end of 
the patio, and often the only way for the horse and car- 
riage to reach it, is by passing through the front room 
or at one side of it. If there is no connection with the 
sewer, a cesspool is dug in the center of the patio, and 
this often brings sickness to the people. 

“ The furniture is either cane-seated or made of wood. 
There are no stuffed sofas or chairs with cloth coverings 
or anything soft such as we have in our home. Insects 
and vermin in Cuba would hide away in such places. 
There are not many books and only a few pictures on the 
walls of the houses. In a one-room shack or hut, the 
floor is made of dirt. In the corner you will find a bundle 
of rags, and the only furniture is a rude chair, a bench 
or two, and perhaps a box for a table. One of these 
houses, I am told, is made of barrel staves and covered 


MORE ABOUT CUBA 


35 


on the roof with pieces of tin made from tin cans that 
come from the United States. Most of the roofs on the 
poor houses, however, are covered with the leaves of 
palm trees. 

“ This kind of a house has a yard outside, and in it 
there is an oven where all the cooking for the family is 
done. Many of the children have never seen a table set 
in the right way. On the table of a poor one-room house 
there is a soup pot that contains the vegetable stew, into 
which all the people dip when they want to fill their dish 
again. Washing dishes in Cuba is often forgotten and 
there is very little washing of any kind among the poor 
and ignorant. Such people wear simple clothing, and 
the same suit or dress has to last a long time, but they 
are contented and seem to be very happy. Many of them 
do not like to work even when they know they must, in 
order to buy food. They are very fond of eating meat, 
but this costs so much money that most of the people have 
to be contented with vegetables and fruit. 

“ The children like to eat sugar cane and this takes 
the place of the stick candy that you sometimes have. 
The Cuban boys and girls also like to slide down hill but 
they cannot do this on sleds, so they slide over the wet 
grass on a big palm tree leaf. 

“ They are very fond of playing with coucuers, a black 
bug with two bright places in its head; these are very 
bright like two little electric lights. When this bug flies 
it has the power also to shed light under its wings so that 
it seems to be like a little shooting star flying from tree 
to tree. These bugs are very plentiful in the sugar cane 
fields and the children hunt for them and put them in 
glass jars. When they shake the jars the coucuers shine 
brightly. In Jamaica, I have been told they put a lot of 


36 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


these funny bugs into the electric light lamps on the auto- 
mobiles and use them instead of oil, or electricity. A 
missionary told me that one evening he saw an old Cuban 
woman sitting before her house, reading a paper, and the 
only light she had was that from a big black lightning 
bug. When she could not see to read clearly, she 
squeezed it and the bug burned, more brightly. 

“ The boys and girls of Cuba have very few games in 
the home, and in some of these the children gamble. 
When they see their parents buying lottery tickets, of 
course it seems right for them to have a little lottery of 
their own. Perhaps they have only a few marbles or nuts 
to gamble with, but this is just as bad as to have silver or 
gold. A large part of their game is simply shouting and 
talking. 

“ The Cuban people are greatly in need of learning the 
simple truth of the Gospel. The Roman Catholic Church 
has been on the Island for more than four hundred years, 
but the people know very little about the salvation that 
Christ came to bring to the world. The church in which 
they were brought up did not raise its voice for freedom 
all during the years when Spain was so cruel. It has not 
spoken against the lottery and some other evil things 
which the people like to do. 

“ There were only a very few schools which the poor 
boys and girls could attend, until Cuba obtained her free- 
dom. The people still live in spiritual darkness unless 
they believe the Gospel which the missionaries preach. 
It is possible to believe in the freedom that the new re- 
public brings without having real freedom from sin in 
the heart. 

“As soon as the war of liberation ended, and the 
Spanish soldiers were defeated, religious liberty was 


MORE ABOUT CUBA 


37 

promised to the people on January i, 1899. Before that 
day it was against the law that the Spaniards made, for 
any one but the priests to preach to the poor people of the 
Island. But the Christians in the United States sent 
missionaries to Cuba very soon. The people were glad to 
have the missionaries come, because they were Ameri- 
cans. They were glad also to hear the new story of the 
love of God and eager to join the churches at once. 
Often they wanted to do this before they understood what 
it meant to live a Christian life. 

“ After a few months the ignorant country people and 
many others who lived in cities were told that the new 
missionaries had come to Cuba not to preach the Gospel 
but only to make Cuba a part of the United States. This 
made it very hard for their new friends to help the 
Cubans to be Christians, but at last they found that they 
were deceived by those who tried to make them hate the 
American missionaries. They saw also how kind and 
patient their new religious guides were and they knew 
that only good men and women would work so hard to 
teach them to follow the Saviour. 

“ Cuba is a hard mission field, because when the mis- 
sionaries first began to preach there only one-fifth of the 
people could read. This made it almost impossible to ex- 
plain to them the truths of the Bible which they could not 
read for themselves. The Cuban people like to gamble 
and go to cock-fights on Sundays, and do many other 
very wrong things on that day. Many of them do not 
see why cock-fighting and gambling and telling lies are 
wrong. 

“ The mission day schools were much needed and have 
done a great deal of good work. The boys and girls love 
to attend them and their fathers and mothers are anxious 


38 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


to have these schools open in their villages. The Cuban 
children are quick to learn. They have wonderful imagi- 
nation, a fine memory, and are good readers. The Chris- 
tian missionaries, who are their teachers, are very kind, 
but very strict. The children are taught to obey, because 
they must learn to obey their teachers, if they are to learn 
to obey the Lord. In many of the little towns and 
villages a school of thirty children can be opened, and the 



Some of these schools have very bright boys and girls 
who afterwards go to higher schools. There are several 
large high schools or institutes in Cuba, and they are 
crowded with young people. Here are trained the young 
men and women who will become the Christian leaders of 
the churches. 

“ In many little towns the churches, built by our mis- 


MORE ABOUT CUBA 


39 


sionaries, are the only places where the people ever hear 
the story of Jesus and His love. In some of them the 
children have their school rooms also. Often, however, 
the school is in a hall not far from the church.” 


VI 


LETTERS FROM THE PALM TREE LAND 

HREE weeks later, about an hour be- 
before it was time to have the next 
meeting of the Lighthouse Mission 
Band, the supply ship came, bringing 
a big envelope from Cuba. The chil- 
dren wanted to open it at once and 
read the letters from the Cuban boys 
and girls, but their mother asked them 
to wait until the supply ship went away, just before the 
clock struck two, when it was time for their meeting to 
begin. 

Let us look over Ruth's shoulder and read the letters 
from Cuba. Tom was much excited, but he said: 
“ Ruth must read the letters today and I will read those 
that come for some other meeting." 

This is what they found in the letters. 

Dear Lighthouse Friends: 

I am eleven years old and my hair is black and long. 
My mother curls it every day on a little bamboo stick. 
I am an Indian. There are very few of our people left 
in Cuba. Once the Indians owned this wonderful land, 
but the white man came long ago and was very cruel to 
our people. I live in a little house covered with big 
leaves. These are so thick that the rain cannot come in. 
I love to hear it rain. Sometimes it pours so hard that I 
can see only a little way from the house. The hens and 
the pigs all run into the house when it rains hard. 

40 



LETTERS FROM PALM TREE LAND 


4i 


We have a pet pig called Dinco. He knows how to do 
many tricks. My father found him out in the sugar 
cane. He was so weak he could hardly squeal. We sup- 
pose a dog had killed his mother. When Father brought 
him home we fed him out of a little spoon and he 
squealed hard and did not want to eat. Soon he learned 
to drink milk. 

I go to a mission school now, and I can hardly wait for 
the time to come each day when school begins. I love 
the teacher. Her home is in the United States, but she 
comes to Cuba to teach because she loves Jesus. I love 
Him too. 

Your friend, 


Dear Children in the Ocean : 

I live in the mountains of Cuba. I can see the ocean 
too from the top of the mountain. It is a climb of two 
hours from my home. My father works in a coffee plan- 
tation. When the coffee trees blossom, they are very 
beautiful. At last the berries grow large and full and 
they are picked. The drying is done on a big flat place. 
They try to keep the berries from getting wet. Often 
the showers come very quickly. 

I have four sisters and we all go to the primary mis- 
sion school. Our teacher lives in Cuba, because she 
wants all the Cuban boys and girls to love her Saviour. 
We learn verses in the Bible every day. The school is 
opened each morning with reading the Bible and prayer. 
I learned the Lord’s Prayer the first week and I say it 
now every day and my mother also says it every night 
before she goes to bed. I taught it to her. 

The teacher has taught my mother how to sew better 
and how to make good bread and how to bake beans too. 
I wonder what ice cream tastes like! We love to have 
the teacher come to our home. Father says she has 
made his five girls all over into new girls. The mission- 
ary told him it was the Saviour who had done it. He 
said, he believed she was right. 


42 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


My father wants all his girls to become Christians. 
Last night after the Sunday service, he told the minister 
he wished to follow Christ very soon. I hope he will 
follow Him. Mother says she has been a Christian two 
months. Yesterday I came home from school early and 
found her kneeling down by her table. She was praying. 
All the rest of the day, she was singing and her face had 
a smile. My father calls her his angel, since she became 
a Christian. 

Your mountain friend. 


Havana, Cuba. 

Dear Sea Children: 

I go to a mission school in Havana. We have a big 
city with many streets in it. My father keeps a store. 
He used to keep his store open on Sundays, but a few 
months ago he gave his heart to the Lord. At once he 
closed his store on Sundays and went to all the services. 
He used to swear, but now he is very careful of his 
language. His friends told him that his family would 
starve if he closed his store one day in each week. But 
Father says he has more people who buy in his store now 
and that he makes more money than he used to make 
when he kept open on Sunday. 

We all go to the mission church now and to the mission 
school too. Father says we must go to the mission school 
to study the Bible every day. But I must tell you why he 
went to the mission the first time. It was because a mis- 
sionary asked him one day if he loved the Lord. It was 
a strange question and Father said he didn’t know. He 
of course wanted to be polite to his customer. The next 
day he heard the stranger preach, and fell in love with 
Jesus. 

Nearly all my girl friends pray every day and are try- 
ing to serve the Lord as well as they can. Please pray 
for us in the school. 

Your far-away friend. 


LETTERS FROM PALM TREE LAND 43 


Santiago, Cuba. 

Dear Friends : 

I live in the city of Santiago. One Sunday morning 
a woman with twenty-five boys and girls passed our 
house. We had just moved into a new part of the city. 
I wondered where those children were all going. The 
next Sunday, when I saw them coming down the street, 
I followed them till they went into a church. It was 
called a Protestant church, and I went in with the chil- 
dren. The singing was lovely and I heard a man pray 
for the first time in my life. I also was told the story 
of Jesus, and now I know why He came down from 
Heaven and died on the cross. It is because we need a 
Saviour and He loves us. 

I once was very sick and I went to a hospital; I was 
cared for very lovingly by a Christian nurse and by a 
very kind doctor. 

Your loving friend. 


Cristo, Cuba. 

Dear Lighthouse Friends : 

I am a pupil in the school at Cristo. Our building is 
filled with boys, and across the road there is another 
building where the girls live. Our chapel service comes 
early each morning, and all the boys and girls attend it. 
We always enjoy having visitors come from the United 
States, and they tell us many very interesting things. 
The people who gave so much money to build this school 
are very much interested in the pupils who attend it. We 
hope we shall not disappoint them, and we want to be 
Christian leaders in our churches. 

One day one of the speakers told us that we did not 
have to wait to be good Christians till we went away 
from the school. He showed us how we could be good 
Christians right here in the school, and learn to be 
leaders now. 

Early in the morning, before breakfast, the girls go 
to walk with a teacher, and the boys are taught to march 


44 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


by another teacher. Our teacher is very strict, and all 
the teachers are that way in our school. The girls learn 
to sew, and the boys are taught to do many useful 
things. We keep our rooms very clean, and make our 
beds in the newest and best way. Inspection hour is a 
hard testing time. 

We have a very happy life here. Often our parents 
come to see us, and they are always pleased with the 
school. I don’t like to think of the day when I shall 
leave this wonderful place, but of course I shall have to 
do so in a little while. Then I hope to be a missionary 
and preach in Baracoa or somewhere in that district. 
Many people have become Christians. It is very moun- 
tainous there. 

Your true friend. 


La Maya, Cuba. 

Dear Far Away Friends: 

I hope this finds you well and in the company of your 
family. I am well. 

Our school is very good and the desks are new. I 
like the teachers and brought them a bunch of bananas 
as tall as a man. 

The things I like to do best are swimming, running, 
baseball, shooting, and horse-back riding. I have a very 
fine black horse. 

My father owns a large coffee plantation. 

I live in the country and go to the farm every Friday 
after school. I have a white American hen, but my 
rooster died. 

Come to La Maya on Christmas day. for we are going 
to have a fine program and I’m to take part in it. 

Your friend. 


Camaguey, Cuba. 

Dear Friends in the Sea : 

I go to school every day as soon as we have our 
breakfast. I like the school and I like my lesson books, ' 


LETTERS FROM PALM TREE LAND 45 


but I like my Bible best. Every day when I return from 
school at midday, as soon as I have finished doing what- 
ever Mother has for me to do, I get my Bible and read. 
In the evening after school I have to prepare my lessons 
for the next day. 

I wish you could see our plants and flowers. I love 
to water them and watch them grow. I go to the Sun- 
day school at the church. In the Sunday school they 
teach us that Jesus shed His blood to save us. I love 
Jesus, the Good Shepherd, and I am glad because he 
takes me to be His little lamb. I pray to Him all the 
time, that He will keep me safe every day. I hope you 
love Jesus too. If you do, He will forgive your sins and 
lead you in the right way. 

Your little friend who thinks of you and loves you. 


Camaguey, Cuba. 

Dear Brother and Sister : 

I am writing this to tell you about our Christmas en- 
tertainment. I am happy because I am to have a part in 
it, and I wish you were here to enjoy it with me. 

Our Sunday school is growing all the time, and there is 
much enthusiasm in Bible study. I love my Bible and 
would like to have much time to read it. I do read some 
every morning the first thing when I get up. I wish I 
could tell you how happy I was the day I joined the 
church. It was the happiest day of my life. 

I hope you can come soon, and visit us. I want you to 
see our flowers. We have such lovely dahlias and chrys- 
anthemums and many others. But I like roses best of 
all ; they are so sweet. 

Mamma and Papa have adopted a little baby boy, and 
we think a lot of him. He is a little orphan. 

Your "friend. 


4 6 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


Camaguey, Cuba. 

My dear little friends : 

I am sure you will be glad to hear something about our 
home. Our house is very small but it is comfortable, 
and we have nice flowers in the yard. My brothers and 
sisters are all smaller than I am. They are too small to 
go out alone. 

I do not always stay at home, because my grandmother 
likes to have me stay with her sometimes. She does not 
live very near to our house. I go to school every day. 
After school a little friend and I sweep and dust the school 
room, and in this way we pay for our tuition. I like to 
go to school because I want to learn many useful things, 
such as sewing, cooking and music. I like all my books, 
but most of all I like to study English, and I hope I shall 
learn to speak it well. 

I go to Sunday school every Sunday, and every day 
I read my Bible. I love to read the Bible, because in the 
Bible we learn what we ought to do. I am a member of 
the church and I go to nearly all the services. In our 
church we shall have a Christmas celebration. 

Lovingly your friend, 



VII 


NEWS FROM A BIG CITY 

TEN Ruth finished the last let- 
ter, her brother said : 
“ Aren’t those wonderful ! It 
is. almost like going to Cuba 
and going to one of the mis- 
sion schools to have so many 
letters. But I am glad I live 
in the lighthouse. I some- 
times wonder if any of our sea-gulls fly so far away as 
this beautiful island.” 

At that moment, Tom’s father called to him, and as he 
ran away he shouted to Ruth : “ Do you suppose the let- 

ters from Porto Rico and other places will be as good as 
the Cuban ones ? ” 

Three weeks from that afternoon, at the next meeting 
of the Band, they had a bundle of letters from the Big 
City where Richard and Clarissa lived with their father 
and mother. There were several letters from children of 
the Mission Band and these were read by Tom. Once 
he talked so loudly that Ruth said : “ Are you trying to 

make the sharks and the flying fish and the sea-gulls un- 
derstand ? ” 

Here are the letters that he read : 

Dear Tom and Ruth : 

Father has told us all about the lighthouse and you 
all. What a fine home you have ! Of course you can’t 

47 



48 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


play tennis or basket-ball or baseball or go skating or slid- 
ing, but we would give up all these things if we could only 
fish all the time and watch the ships sail by. We have 
never seen the ocean in a big storm. 

We meant to write you before, but we went on a 
long ride with Father in our touring car, to see Grand- 
mother, who lives near Cleveland. We reached home 
again yesterday and found your fine letter. Father also 
was glad to see Tom’s letter on his desk. Father says 
you write a good letter and he gives you a mark of A plus 
on it. That is the highest mark we can get in our school. 
He never marks our letters more than B plus. 

Father and Mother say we can visit you next summer 
and stay two weeks. We hope the supply ship will forget 
to come for a whole month and then we can have a longer 
visit. 

We have a Junior Mission Band, that meets every Fri- 
day afternoon after school. We are studying about Good 
Bird, the Indian. One day Rev. Henry Roe Cloud, a real 
Indian and a noble Christian, told us about the need of 
having Indian boys and girls educated to be leaders of his 
people. We have a wonderful man here in our church. 
He was once an orphan boy and went to live with a man 
on his farm. He was born in New York and had for- 
gotten what he was taught about Christ. His father and 
mother are Italians. The man who gave him a home 
was a Christian, and of course was good to him. The 
boy worked in the garden and did errands, and carried 
milk to families in the village. He was also very smart 
in his studies in school and liked to read good books. 
After studying hard, he went to college, and now he is the 
head-master in a school which trains missionaries to work 
among the Italians. 

In our Mission Band, we have a little Hungarian girl. 
Her father is dead and her mother was afraid to have 
her come to our meetings. One day our missionary took 
her picture while she was playing. The next day he gave 
her one. She had never had a picture of herself before, 


NEWS FROM A BIG CITY 


49 


and she and her mother were very pleased with it. Soon 
after that she met the missionary and asked if he would 
take her mother’s picture too. He went to her house, 
asked her mother to stand in front of the camera, and 
soon the mother, too, had her own picture. 

The missionary then called often and told them about 
Christ’s love for them. Now they love the Saviour too, 
and have been received as members of our church. The 
little girl often sings to us in the Hungarian language. 

In our Band we have a little boy we call Sammy. He 
was hurt in the street two years ago and he has to sit in 
a wheel-chair all day. The doctor says he can never 
walk again. He is a poor boy and loves to come to the 
Mission Band and to the Bible school. All are very kind 
to him. He suffers much pain but he almost always has 
a smile on his poor, pale face. All the boys and girls 
love Sammy very much. 

The Bible games we play at our Mission Band are great. 
We run a race to see who can find a verse in the Bible 
first. To do this quickly we learned all the books in the 
Bible backward and forward. We can say them very 
fast each way. 

Another game is to have the leader open the Gospels, 
read a familiar verse and then see who knows where it 
is. Nearly all of us can now guess right on more than a 
hundred verses. The third game we play each Friday 
is to finish the last half of a verse, after the leader reads 
the first half of it. I suppose you both know that you 
can read the Bible through in a year if you read three 
chapters each day and five on each Sunday. We are 
sending in this big envelope a few letters from some boys 
and girls in our Band. 

Please write again soon and send us some of those 
letters the Cuban and Porto Rican children send to you. 
Perhaps we four will go to the same college when we 
grow up. 

Your loving friends, 

Richard and Clarissa. 


50 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


Dear Friends : 

Richard and Clarissa asked me to write to you. I see 
them every Friday at the Mission Band. 1 earn money 
for the mite box by selling papers. My father drives 
a milk wagon and gets up at two o’clock in the morn- 
ing. I almost never see him, for he sleeps in the day. 

I was asked to go to the Band and went one day. 
Soon after that, a missionary called and talked with my 
mother. 

Now my four brothers and sisters go to church each 
Sunday and my mother and father go when they can. 
They are all Christians now. Last Easter our whole 
family of seven joined our church. It all happened be- 
cause I was asked to go to the Band. 

We all go to school and Father says he is going to have 
us stay in school as long as he can keep us there. Fred 
says he is going to be a minister and Arthur hopes to be 
a doctor. I am going to be a missionary to Cuba when I 
grow up. Jennie and Hattie say they are to be teachers. 

Mother says if we will be good Christians that is all 
she will ask. We have a motto over our sitting room 
looking-glass. It reads, “ God Bless our Home.” Father 
brought it home the day before Easter. 

I am glad to write this letter and I hope you are well 
at the big lighthouse. 

Your loving friend, 

Edgar. 


Dear Friends : 

I have never seen a sea-gull, or a lighthouse, or a ship, 
or an ocean, but I see a fire engine every day and often 
run after it when there is a fire. I am trying to love 
Jesus, but some days bad words go out of my mouth and 
1 have bad thoughts in my heart. It is hard not to feel 
so when Peter Ducco, who lives in the alley, throws a 
stone at my sister. He laughs at me because I go to the 
Mission Band every Friday and to church each Sunday. 

Father is sick and coughs hard. Mother works out all 
day. My oldest sister Maria is a little mother to us and 


NEWS FROM A BIG CITY 


5i 


is a good cook. We all try to keep the house and the 
yard clean. The missionary calls and reads to Father 
nearly every week. We love her. 

In the summer nearly every Saturday, we all go up in 
the park and play tag. 

Your true friend, 

Andrew. 


Dear Sea-Children : 

I had six brothers and sisters, but only three are living 
now. Tony was bitten by a rat one night and it poisoned 
him and he died. Danto was run over by an ice team 
and only lived a week. Tina fell into the canal and was 
drowned. When she died a missionary came to our house 
and we have been going to her church ever since. She is 
a kind woman. Mother says, she is an angel. 

The Friday Mission Band and the Bible school are 
great. Nearly all the Band and our Bible school chil- 
dren go to church too. I like to go to church. I know 
every word. I think I am going to be a minister. 
Mother says, perhaps the Lord may let me be one, if I am 
a good Christian. That is what I am trying to be. I sup- 
pose you are good kids too. 

Yours truly, 

Antonio. 


VIII 


A SURPRISE FROM PORTO RICO 

FEW days later the supply ship came 
again and the children were disap- 
pointed because it brought them 
no missionary letters, but their 
mother received a long envelope 
with the postmark of Boston. It 
said that her college classmate, 
Miss Plenderson, a Porto Rican 
missionary, would come to visit at the lighthouse as soon 
as she could leave her friends on the shore. Perhaps this 
would be when the ship went to them the next time. She 
asked the children’s mother to write by return mail if she 
could come. 

Of course the Captain took the invitation away with 
him, and promised to drop the letter in the post office 
himself just as soon as he reached the land. Tom’s 
mother let him add these words as a postscript : “ Please 

be sure and come, Miss Henderson, by the next boat. 
We are studying about Missions and we want to learn 
all we can about Porto Rico and the children in that is- 
land.” 

Two weeks later when the ship returned it reached the 
lighthouse just before supper time. The children’s 
mother had seen it coming and had set an extra plate 
for her friend, hoping that she had come. There was 
52 



A SURPRISE FROM PORTO RICO 


53 x 


great excitement when Miss Henderson, who hid behind 
the pilot house for a few minutes, at last climbed up the 
ladder and was welcomed by them all. 

Soon it seemed as if they had always known her. 
Bobby jumped up with delight, Betsey rubbed against her 
long gray dress and even the parrot was excited and 
shouted, “ Good evening. Glad you came. Sit down 
and stay awhile. Naughty dog, Tiger.” This pleased 
the visitor very much and it was easy to see that she had 
fallen in love with Tom and Ruth and Paul. 

While every one was talking at once and saying how 
glad they were to see her, their mother said : “ Be quiet, 

children, I know Miss Henderson is too tired tonight to 
talk about Porto Rico and after supper you may all go 
to bed early and your father and Miss Henderson and I 
will talk this evening about our old school friends.” 

Soon after that the children were asleep. Then the 
hours flew past while Mrs. Dodge and her husband sat 
and talked with their guest. 

The next morning after prayers in the big lighthouse 
room, Miss Henderson said : “ Now children, shall we 

have a talk about Porto Rico? 

“ The Island was discovered by Christopher Columbus 
on November 16, 1493, during his second voyage across 
the Atlantic. A monument to this great man now stands 
near Aguadilla at the western end of the Island. A 
spring there is called Columbus Spring. Porto Rico is 
about 1,400 miles southeast from New York. The voy- 
age takes five days. The Island is about three-fourths as 
large as Connecticut. It has 3,606 square miles. On 
one of the mountains the Atlantic Ocean may be seen to- 
ward the north, and the Caribbean Sea on the south. 

“ The people live very near each other. In the United 


54 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


States the average number of persons living on each 
square mile is 20. In the Philippine Islands, it is 60, but 
in Porto Rico the number is 270. The population is in- 
creasing, and sometimes wise men say it will be hard to 
feed and clothe them, if the number becomes much larger. 
The people of the Island number about 1,000,000 ; of these 
400,000 are Negroes and mixed races, 100,000 Spaniards, 
and 500,000 real Porto Ricans. 

“ Ponce de Leon was the first to explore the Island. 
He was anxious to find where the gold was. Three hun- 
dred soldiers went with him. The Indian chief received 
Ponce very kindly, gave him a feast, and his daughter in 
marriage. He also sent guides to show him where the 
gold was in the bottoms of the rivers. In 15 11 Diego 
Columbus became governor of Porto Rico in place of 
Ponce. He also was eager to find more gold and was 
cruel to the natives. Many of these he made work in 
the mines as slaves. The Spanish government ruled 
Porto Rico until 1898. It always treated the people in a 
cruel way. But the Spaniards did one kind act when 
they freed the slaves in 1873. These numbered 34,000. 

“ On July 25, 1898, the island became a part of the 
United States as a result of the war with Spain which 
made Cuba free. 

“ The people of the Island were then poor and only 
about one-fifth of them could read and write. Under 
their old form of religion, they were ignorant and im- 
moral. The schools were very few and very poor too. 
A workman then earned only about twenty-five cents a 
day, but this was not enough to keep his family fed and 
clothed. Three-fourths of the people lived in poverty, 
and they ate mostly fruits and vegetables. Sometimes 
they were able to buy salt codfish and rice. 


A SURPRISE FROM PORTO RICO 


55 


“ The United States government soon built schools. 
It found but one schoolhouse on the Island. Four years 
later, in 1902, the new schools had more than 40,000 
pupils and the next year 70,000 were in the classes. 
There are now more than 1,130 schools and 100,000 
pupils are being trained in them. 

“ There are no waste places in Porto Rico. Sugar, 
coffee, tobacco, bananas, oranges, and other tropical fruits 
grow anywhere. There are no swamps or rocky fields. 
The whole Island can be made into a big fruit and vege- 
table garden. 

“ The people too will have very rich lives, if we give 
them the Gospel. They will all grow good crops for 
Christ. Our missionaries plant the seed of truth that 
is in the Bible, in their lives. 

“ The people make Sunday the great day for sports, 
and we missionaries teach them to go to church and 
worship God and to serve Him all the week. They like 
to gamble and many of them drink liquor, but there are 
no saloons in the Island. The Porto Ricans do not often 
get intoxicated. 

“ For four hundred years the Roman Catholic Church 
was the only one in Porto Rico. The churches were 
built in the cities and towns, and the people, numbering 
800,000, who lived in the country did not have religious 
services to attend. When the missionaries went to the 
Island, the common people were very glad to hear the 
Gospel. They were hungry for the bread of life and 
thirsty for the water in the well of salvation. 

“ The people we found were without a religion of love, 
faith, and hope. Now thousands of the people of Porto 
Rico know that God loves them and sent His Son to die 
for them. They have learned also what faith in Christ 


56 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


as their personal Saviour means. They know they are 
sinful but they also know that Christ is a wonderful 
Saviour. 

“ These people have stopped drinking liquor, learned 
to work hard, and are generous in their gifts to the mis- 
sions. Some of the churches have sent money to have 
the Gospel taken to the people in Haiti and San Domingo, 
their neighbors on another island. 

“ The people love to go to church and when they are 
converted they make strong Christians. There are now 
many churches all over the Island where the new mis- 
sionaries preach. They also hold meetings in the streets 
and talk to the crowds of children and older people. 

“We have hospitals to care for the people when they 
are sick. The missionary doctors and nurses help the 
people very much. Many of the sick who are taken to 
the hospitals do not know about God and His Son, but 
they are treated so kindly that they soon learn to love and 
serve Him just as their new Christian friends do. 

“ There are mission schools for girls and others for 
boys. In some schools they teach young men to become 
missionaries and how to preach the Gospel so that others 
will wish to follow the Saviour and do the Will of God. 

“ I have been a missionary in Porto Rico nine years. 
I have to go back to the States every two or three years 
to rest and get away from the heat. I am going back 
soon to my school of seventy children in the wonderful 
Island. I am happy to work there, because I have the 
chance to tell the Gospel story to so many poor people, 
who know only what I tell them about our Heavenly 
Father. ,, 


MESSAGES FROM ACROSS THE SEA 



HE children were very quiet while 
& Miss Henderson was speaking and 
were sorry when she ended the 
story. 


As they sat there on the wall, 
their father, who had been out in a 
boat fishing, shouted : “ What do 
you think of that for a fish ? ” 


Tom replied : “ Oh, that is a- bouncer ! ” 

Miss Henderson added : “ I am very proud to have 
Tom with me today, Mr. Dodge, because all the boys I 
have known are very fond of fishing, and Tom has not 
asked to leave the Mission Band meeting.” 

“ Oh,” said Tom, “ I am very fond of fishing, .too, but 
I would rather hear about the Porto Rican Missions now, 
for I can fish any pleasant day.” 

The father kept on fishing and Miss Henderson said: 
“ I have a surprise for you. The Captain gave me a big 
envelope from Porto Rico. I promised to give it to you, 
but I didn’t tell him when I would do it.” 

Then she passed the envelope to Ruth who opened it 
crying: “ Oh, Father, do come in quickly and hear these 
letters from the children of Porto Rico.” 

A moment later they saw their father rowing quickly 
57 


58 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


toward the light and soon he was standing by their side 
with a big bluefish in his hands weighing more than fifteen 
pounds. Tom looked at it and said: “That is the big- 
gest one we have ever had, Father, but you couldn’t stand 
it, could you, to try to get a bigger one and lose these 
wonderful letters ? ” 

The father laughed and joined the company as Miss 
Henderson took the envelope, saying as she did so: 
“ Why ! These are letters from some of the children 
whom I know; I must read them to you at once, unless 
the children wish to do so.” 

Tom and Ruth both said : “ Oh, please begin at once, 

Miss Henderson. We cannot wait a minute longer.” 

Then their friend read these letters : 


Dear Friends: 

I was once very sick and my mother was tired. We 
lived in a poor house and my mother worked hard. We 
never went to church, because there was no meeting house 
near our home. We are high up in the mountains and 
my father works on a big coffee plantation. 

One day a stranger who spoke good Spanish, called. 
His wife was with him, and they were both very good and 
spoke kindly to me. They were missionaries and told us 
that God loved us and sent His Son to save us from our 
sins, and show us how to live right and at last make us 
ready to go to Heaven. 

Father was at home the day they called, and he was not 
sure that they were good people, but Mother believed at 
once all they said. We soon found the man was a doctor. 
He told my parents I could never get well at home, and 
said I could go to the hospital at San Juan, without any 
cost. 

Then Father knew they were good people and he 
seemed very happy. I was taken in a long hammock on 
the shoulders of my father and uncle, for twenty miles. 


MESSAGES FROM ACROSS THE SEA 


59 


We reached the wonderful Presbyterian Hospital at San 
Juan late at night. In three months I was well again. 
The doctors and nurses were very kind to me. A great 
many poor sick people come here each year and are made 
well again. They all learn about Christ also and His 
Gospel. I now have returned to my home, and next year 
I hope to study, and when I am old enough, to learn to be 
a nurse in the same hospital where they were so good to 
me. My family are all Christians now and members of 
the church. 

I am so glad the missionaries came to Porto Rico. 
Christ was good to send them, and I am glad they 
obeyed His will. 

Your loving friend, 


Dear Lighthouse Friends: 

Perhaps we could not tell in this short letter the things 
which we want to do for Christ in our little Island. We 
desire to preach His holy Gospel among our countrymen 
and to go also to foreign nations and tell all of God’s 
love. 

We have to proceed humbly just as Moses, Paul, and 
our Lord did. For this we are getting ready. Every 
morning we read the Bible and pray. In school and at 
work we are under certain rules. One of these is : “ No 

student is allowed to use any kind of liquors, cigarettes, 
and the like.” We attend every day the school classes 
and strive to make good records. By such rules we learn 
to be honest and able not only to control ourselves, but 
also to set a good example to others. 

The other Latin-American people are needing us to go 
there to teach them the news which Christ brought. 
Through His help we will do as much as we can for 
them. In the same way that Paul, Barnabas, and the 
other apostles started to foreign nations to preach, we 
also should go to take the news of salvation that all may 
turn from their ways of sin. We are sure to do it be- 
cause the Lord is helping us here in this little Island. 


60 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


Just as John the Baptist prepared the way for Christ, we 
hope to prepare the people for His coming in Porto Rico. 

Yours truly, 


Dear Friends : 

My teacher has asked me to write a letter to you telling 
some things about the cause of Christ in this Island. I 
am very glad to do it, though I know not very much Eng- 
lish to write it correctly. 

Two and a half years ago before I came to this school, 
I knew not Christ but since then I have begun to learn 
some of His teachings. About four months ago I was 
received as member of the church of San German. 

Here in this Island there are many Christian churches 
and many people are members of them. These are do- 
ing a good work for the people. Our ministers are very 
kind and good. I like very much to go to Sunday school, 
for all boys must go so as to learn how to live with God. 
Whenever I learn a teaching I practice it, because I want 
to teach others something about Christ. We have a 
Christian Endeavor Society which has had very good re- 
sults. We have many other services during the week. 

This is one of the most important islands in the world 
in many respects. We have many cities which are con- 
nected by beautiful roads and a good railway system. 
Here is one of the greatest centrals of the world, that of 
Guanica. A “ central ” is our name for sugar factory. 

We play games such as tennis, baseball, football, and 
others. Football is not played very much, on account of 
the heat. Some of our boys are good players. 

This Institute is the only one of its kind in this Island. 
Over a hundred boys and girls attend it, and learn how 
to work with their hands as well as to study. The 
highest grade is the fourth year of high school. It is 
doing good for the Island, which is one of the most 
attractive in the world. 


Your friend, 


MESSAGES FROM ACROSS THE SEA 61 


As Miss Henderson laid down the last letter, she 
looked at the children and said : “ Isn’t it too bad that 

this is the last one ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Tom ; “ I wish there were a hundred more, 
and perhaps another big envelope full of them will come 
some other day.” 

As they were rising to look at a big ship that was pass- 
ing the lighthouse, Tom said again : “ Miss Henderson, 

haven’t you more letters hidden away somewhere ? ” 



X 


WHAT MEXICAN CHILDREN SEE 

IE friend from Porto Rico ap- 
peared not to hear the question, 
but as she saw that the children 
were both waiting for an answer, 
she said: “ Yes, I must tell you 
that I have one more big envelope, 
that has a postmark 4 Mexico 
City/ ” 

The children danced for joy and the mother said: 
“ We will all go into the house now, and this evening after 
supper we will hear the letters from the children of 
Mexico.” 

When the dishes were cleared away and washed and 
wiped by the children, Paul was put to bed and the rest of 
the family and their visitor soon were hearing these let- 
ters from the Mexican children: 

My dear Friends : 

My teacher here at Puebla has told me that I can 
write this letter to you. I am eleven years and eight 
months old. My father and mother are Christians, and I 
have seven brothers and sisters. I have two dogs, which 
are very faithful pets. One of them is white and the 
other is black, but I am glad to tell you we also have 
thirty chickens, and a cow, which I like very much. She 
gives us plenty of milk every day, but her little calf don’t 
know anything yet except to eat. I wish I had a pony 
which I could ride. 



62 


WHAT MEXICAN CHILDREN SEE 63 


We have a good school here, and I am in the sixth 
year. My teachers scold me when I do not study hard, 
but I deserve it. They also are telling me every day that 
I must not smoke or drink intoxicating liquors. The 
games I like best are baseball, tug-of-war, leap frog, and 
tin base. In the story of our country, I like best that 
chapter about the bravery of Cuauhtemoc, whom the 
Spaniards tormented. Also the defense of Chapultepec 
by the students of a military academy. 

I always go to church every Sunday because there I 
learn how to grow to be a good man. Sometimes I have 
felt strong desires to follow Christ, but I am ashamed to 
tell you that I am timid, and when my friends ask me, 
“Do you go with the Protestants?” I sometimes feel 
tempted to deny Christ. But I hope to overcome this 
soon. 

Your affectionate friend and servant, 


My dear Friends : 

I want to write this letter and tell you my thoughts. 
I am twelve years old, and the youngest in the family. I 
am glad to tell you that we are Christians at our house, 
and my mamma has always sent me to this school, so that 
while studying my lessons I would also learn about the 
Gospel and how to follow Jesus. 

I have three brothers and one sister. We have a little 
tiny dog in our house ; his color is white, and we call him 
“Vivi.” We also have a little kitten that we call “ Jug- 
guete” (toy), and a number of chickens of all kinds. 
We did have a cow, but had to sell her because of the 
war, as we had no hay or grain to feed her. We also 
had some pet goats, but we ate them all up. . 

I am in the Mission school and I study in the fifth 
year. There are nine other girls in my class. The name 
of the girl who sits with me at my desk is Ester Martinez. 
I like to study Geography and Arithmetic and I could 
study them all day if they would let me. The game I like 
best is one we have here called “A 1 Car La Pelota” (a 


64 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


form of hand-ball). Every Sunday I go to Sunday 
school because I love to study the Bible. 

In the story of our country, I like best to read about 
the “ Torment of Cuauhtemoc.” He was a brave and 
active Indian, whom the Spaniards tormented by burning 
his feet, trying to make him tell where the treasures of 
Montezuma were hidden, but he would not tell them, and 
suffered to the last in silence. I want to follow Christ, 
and be a Christian, and become a member of this church. 
These are my thoughts and desires that I wanted to tell 
you about. 

Your attentive servant, 


My dear Friends: 

I am eleven years old, and I am glad to tell you that 
my parents are both living. I have five brothers and 
sisters, and I also own a dog “ Bull Terry.” He is not 
very pretty, but he knows a lot. I go to a Christian 
school, and my teachers are very good to me. We have 
Bible reading and prayer every morning before we begin 
our classes. I like to play baseball better than any other 
game. 

In the “ Story of our Country,” I like to read of the 
little boy Mendoza, who stood in the trenches alone in the 
war of independence. When all the men were dead he 
continued to fire the cannon, causing the enemy to flee, 
and so winning the victory. I like to go to church, and 
I am glad to tell you that I don’t have to go into the 
basement any more, as I am big enough to be in one of 
the classes upstairs. I want to be a Christian and fol- 
low Christ, and I believe God will help me to do so. 

Your true friend, 


My dear Friends: 

I am twelve years old, and I live with my father and 
mother, brothers and sisters. They love me very much, 
and I am happy to have such a good home. I am afraid 
I can never pay back to my parents what I owe them for 


WHAT MEXICAN CHILDREN SEE 65 

their kindness to me. But I will love them all my life, 
and maybe that will help. 

I pray every day and ask God to let my parents and my 
brothers and sisters live a long time. I have two doves, 
one white, and the other gray, also a cat which we call 
“ Diamond.” In our school we have a little service of 
singing, prayer, and Bible reading every morning. Our 
teacher has been reading to us about Jonah going to 
Nineveh, and also about Jesus curing the paralytic and 
raising Lazarus from the dead. The classes I like best 
in school, are reading, drawing, history, and the Bible. 
I also like to go to Sunday school, because there I learn 
how I must live and do in order to be a good woman 
when I grow up. 

I like to hear the prayers offered in our Sunday school, 
and also the verses which we have to repeat from mem- 
ory every Sunday. But do you know, what had made me 
think the most was a prayer offered last Sunday in our 
Sunday school by a little boy six or seven years old. He 
prayed out loud, and asked God to save his mamma who 
was very sick. In the “ Story of Mexico,” I like best 
the chapter that tells about Nicholas Bravo, who pardoned 
the three hundred prisoners guilty of taking part in the 
plot which resulted in the death of Bravo’s father. They 
thought they were all to be shot, and Nicholas Bravo made 
a speech to them and said, “ Men, I will take vengeance 
upon you now, and you are all forgiven, and may now go 
free.” 

I am not very fond of games, and I like best to read and 
study, instead of play. But I do like to go out in the 
country, where the air is pure and free. I have had 
many wishes to follow Christ and obey Him, but I have 
not been able to do it yet, because so many of my friends 
make fun of me because I go with the Protestants. I 
hope that with God’s help I will overcome all these 
troubles, and I will follow Jesus, and if I can, will bring 
many others to walk in His path. 

I am, 

Your obedient servant, 


66 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


My dear Friends : 

I am very glad to write a letter to my friends in the 
United States. I am twelve years old. I have some 
big brothers who are at work, but I also have some work 
to do in our home, for we are poor and all of us have 
to work very hard. I have to carry water, feed the 
chickens, water and sweep the street, and do all this after 
my study hours in school. I have one dog of which I 
am very fond. I wish I also had a pony. We have a 
little canary at our house, and I can count seven different 
colors on its body. 

Our schoolhouse is very small, but we have many chil- 
dren in it. I like best to study arithmetic, reading and 
writing. We have good times at recess, playing ball and 
tin base. In Sunday school, the stories I like best are 
those that tell about Jesus, when He fed five thousand 
people with only five loaves of bread and two little fishes. 
I like also the stories about His raising Lazarus and the 
daughter of Jairus from the dead. In the story of my 
country, I love to read about the “ Siege of Cuautla,” and 
the “ Imprisonment of Morelos ” and the heroic way in 
which he died. I am very anxious to learn more about 
the Bible, and I would like also to know how to pray and 
follow the commandments of Jesus. 

I always go to church when I can, but I have not joined 
it yet. 

Your faithful friend, 


My dear Friends : 

A few days ago I was sick and could not write then, 
but thanks to the care of my good Christian mother, I 
am now well again, and can go to school every day. I 
want to finish the grades and then study to be a mission- 
ary. I go to church and Sunday school every Sunday, 
and last Sunday my teacher gave me a New Testament 
as a reward for faithful attendance and punctuality. 

I like best to play with my dolls, and whenever I have 
any time, I make dresses for them. My little sister and 


WHAT MEXICAN CHILDREN SEE 67 

other girl friends come and play with me, sometimes. 
The pets I like best are pigeons and chickens. I will be 
eleven years old next February, and my parents have 
promised to have a little party on that day, when we are 
going to make some tamales and enchiladas, two Mexican 
dishes of which all are very fond. We are to invite a 
number of my little girl friends to my house for that day. 
I am sorry to tell you that here in Mexico we are having 
a war. Many times we haven’t any corn and we have no 
candy at all. I hope to grow up and then I will be a mem- 
ber of the Christian Church in this place. 

I am glad to call myself, 

Your friend. 


My dear Friends: 

My papa is a colporteur, and he has taught me a great 
many good things. Sometimes I go with him on his trips, 
but on account of the war, I have not been able to go with 
him this year. I am now going to school every day, bet- 
ter than I used to do. Every Sunday I go to Sunday 
school. I love best to play marbles and spin my top. 

I used to have a little dog and some chickens, but I 
haven’t any now. I traded my dog for two roosters, and 
since we ate the roosters I have nothing left. I will be 
eleven years old in October. We are very sorry that we 
have a war here in Mexico, and only God knows why it 
continues. My papa is always telling me about my duties 
in being a Christian, and I expect soon to join the 
church. 

Your faithful friend, 


“ I am very sorry for those roosters,” said Ruth. “ I 
hope we shall have another letter from that boy and a 
lot more from the Mexican children.” 

The children were not sleepy, but it was time to go to 
bed, and at once they said “ Good night,” and were 


68 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


soon dreaming of the children of Mexico and Porto Rico. 
An hour after that the moon was just coming up out of 
the ocean, when the lighthouse keeper and his wife led 
Miss Henderson to her little room, whose windows 
opened toward the east and the beautiful island which 
she loved so much. 



XI 


MOUNTAIN AND VALLEY CHILDREN 



ISS HENDERSON'S visit passed very 
quickly, and two weeks after the day 
she came, the supply ship made its next 
call at the lighthouse. It was a per- 
fect day and the ocean was very smooth 
and blue. It was hard for Tom and 
Ruth to say good-by to the missionary 
from Porto Rico, who had told them so 
many stories and had read to them so many wonderful 
letters. 

A very strange thing happened when the little steam- 
ship was leaving the light. Bobby, who had followed his 
new friend on to the boat, had chased a rat down a stair- 
way, and was not discovered till a hundred feet of water 
stretched between the departing ship and the wall. 
When he saw that he was being carried away, he gave 
one loud bark and leaped into the sea and swam around 
the wall and came up to the little wharf again near the 
playground. 

This made a great excitement, but in a moment Bobby 
was on the wall once more barking and running around, 
while the lighthouse children and their mother and father 
were still waving good-by to Miss Henderson. 

That afternoon it was decided not to wait a week until 
the regular time for the next meeting of the Mission 

69 


70 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 

Band, but to read at once the letters that came that day 
in the boat from the children in the valleys and on the 
mountains. 

Their father was with them also, and sat with little 
Paul in his arms while Tom and Ruth listened to their 
mother as she read to them all. Before beginning the 
first letter, she said: 



“ The people of Mexico very much need to have the 
truth of God, which only the missionaries can take to 
them by their lips and by their lives. The Mexicans, or 
nearly all of them, are very ignorant. In the civil war 
in recent years several of these missionaries have died 
as martyrs for their faith in Christ. But in spite of the 
war the mission work has gone forward fast and many 
new converts have been won for Christ. During the war 


MOUNTAIN AND VALLEY CHILDREN yt 


nearly all the American missionaries had to leave the 
country and return to their homes in the United States. 
The native pastors worked all alone, but the Lord was 
with them and the number of the disciples of Christ 
grew. 

“ Many of the Mexicans have left Mexico and are now 
living in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Cali- 
fornia, and other states. Some Mexicans have always 
lived in the United States, in those parts of the country 
which were in Mexico before they became states or 
territories in our country. 

“ From the children living here and there in the south- 
western part of our nation, I have some letters to read 
you. They are very interesting ones. I will take them 
in the order in which they come out of the envelope, and 
I will let Ruth reach in and draw one after the other out. 
It will be a kind of a prize bag.” 

The first letter that Ruth found in her hand read this 
way: 

Dear Ocean Friends: 

My home is in El Paso, Texas. I live near the Rose 
Gregory Houchen Settlement. I used to live a long way 
off from here, but my father obtained work in El Paso, 
and so we came to this place. 

We have a large family, and my mother soon became 
very sick. We were too poor to have a doctor, but my 
mother needed one very much. One day father lost his 
work, and within a week our food was all gone. Then 
one of my little sisters was also sick. When we didn’t 
know what to do, a wonderful thing happened. 

That day a very kind woman came to our house, and 
asked to see my mother. She spoke Spanish beautifully, 
and her voice was very soft and tender. When I went 
to the door, I burst into tears, and told her my mother was 
very sick and little Mary was also. At once she came in 


72 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


and saw how poor and needy we were. After making 
my mother comfortable, as much as she could, she hur- 
ried away for a doctor. That afternoon she returned 
with another missionary, and both of them cleaned up out- 
house. They brought food and medicine, and in a few 
days mother and Mary were well again. What do you 
think they found had made my mother sick? It was im- 
pure water. 

We go to the Settlement House every day now, and 
are learning everything that children need to know, and 
best of all, we have been taught to pray and to read the 
Bible. Our new friends soon found Father a place to 
work, and all was at once changed in our home. 

The missionaries taught my mother to cook and to sew 
on a machine that Father has bought. I now can sew, 
cook, mend stockings, make hats and dress, braid mats, 
and weave a hammock. I can make baskets too. 

Mother says that our life is all changed now. Last 
night at supper, Father said that the Settlement has 
settled all our troubles and made our home over into a 
new happy one. If you ever come to El Paso, be sure 
and go to the Settlement, and see the missionaries and the 
children there. 

Lovingly your friend, 


Dear Far-away Friends: 

Did you ever hear about our wonderful Harwood In- 
dustrial School at Albuquerque, New Mexico? I am glad 
I did, because it has made me into a new girl. Let me 
tell you what we do in one day. After breakfast the 
little girls wash the dishes, brush the floors, and set the 
tables for the next meal. Some of the older girls scrub 
the floors of the bed-rooms, and all the girls make their 
own beds. 

Each girl has her own bag in the sewing room. It is 
not made of silk, but cotton. She has her own chair, too, 
and on this her mending is piled. If the girls are too little 
to mend, the older ’girls do it for them. All of us wear 


MOUNTAIN AND VALLEY CHILDREN 73 


brown serge uniforms, and these are all made in school. 

Before we go to church Sunday morning, we stand in 
line, and the teachers look very carefully to see if every 
dress and hat are right, and if our hands and faces are 
clean. Of course each girl has her hair combed just as 
the teacher has told her to do it. Our tam-o’-shanters 
match our dresses. We wear red ties and hair ribbons 
too. 

Our Bible study class is a fine one. My father and 
mother live in a little adobe house near a large, high 
mountain. I am going home next summer to work hard 
helping Mother. I am also to teach in our little Sun- 
day school near the mountain, and will try to teach the 
boys and girls how to love and follow the Lord who died 
for us all. 

My father is very poor, but works hard. One of my 
older brothers helps to pay my expenses at this school, 
and some good Christian woman, whom I have never 
seen, and whose name I don’t even know, sends the rest 
of the money. If it were not for that good woman, I 
could not be in the school learning to be a teacher. I 
hope to grow up to be a missionary myself. My health 
is good, and I can run very fast. One day I ran four 
miles on an errand for my father, and my mother said I 
was back home almost before she thought I could have 
reached the place she sent me to. 

I hope you can come some time and see our school and 
meet our teachers. I know three friends who live in my 
village, and they are praying every day that God will put it 
into the hearts of some one to send some money so that 
they can come to our wonderful Christian school. 

Your true friend, 


Dear Far Away Friends: 

Have you ever seen a mountain ? I live on the side of 
one. I can look a long way. Across the wide valley I 
can see other mountains that always have snow on them. 
My father and mother are Mexicans, but they all love the 


74 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


United States. I see an eagle now. My father votes for 
the President. 

The mission school has made a new boy of me, my 
mother and father say. The teachers have often told 
me about the Lord. I have read many times the story of 
Jesus and how He died to save all the people that lived 
when He was on the earth, also those who have lived 
since and who will live on the earth as long as it turns 
round. 

What I am going to be when I am a big man, I don’t 
know, but I am sure I shall be a Christian and serve God 
as long as I live. Then I am sure I shall go to Heaven 
when I die. 

Mother says she can’t thank the Lord enough for what 
the mission school has done for her children. I am the 
middle one and I am a boy. 

Yours truly, 


Dear Ocean Kids : 

In Colorado there are many Mexican people and I 
am one of them. I speak Spanish, but I like English 
better than Spanish. I can read and write both lan- 
guages. My mother and father cannot read or write. 
They are very poor and work very hard. The mission 
school is near my house, so I go every day. Many of 
my brothers and sisters go. The teacher is good to my 
mother. My parents and my sister are now members of 
the church near the mission school. I am a member too. 

Father used to swear and drink whisky. Now he does 
not swear or get mad and he drinks only water and milk. 
God made him into a new man, when He forgave his sins. 
He now has much hard work to do, but we are all happy. 
I expect to own a big ranch when I grow to be a man. 

Yours with love, 


Dear Friends: 

I live in Colorado in a canyon. Some eagles live in 
the rocks near the top of the mountain. One day one of 


MOUNTAIN AND VALLEY CHILDREN 75 

them came down near our house and stole a lamb and 
carried it up to his home. My father shot at the eagle 
many times, but it didn’t stop flying. 

When I was eight years old I could not read. Then a 
new family came to live near our home. They were 
Mexicans too. There were two children about as old as 
myself. Their father worked with my father on the rail- 
road track. Their mother could read, because she once 
went to a Christian school. The missionaries told her the 
stories in the Bible. Soon she had all the children in the 
canyon in a Sunday school. We had this school in her 
house. In a little while I learned to spell and soon I 
could read the Bible. 

I am going to a mission school now. My father gets 
more pay this year. He says I must learn all I can and 
grow up to be a good Christian. I have a pony. His 
name is Jacko. Last Saturday he threw me over his 
head when we met a rattlesnake by the side of the path. 
Father says it is a wonder I was not bitten by the snake. 
I picked myself up, and I killed that snake and dragged 
it home by the tail. Jacko ran home and my mother was 
afraid I was killed. She cried for joy when she saw me 
coming up the canyon path. 

The skin of the snake was fastened outside our door. 
Yesterday the train stopped in front of our house. Some- 
thing in the engine broke. A man in the train saw the 
snakeskin and gave my mother five dollars for it. 

I love to read the Bible. I read it every day to 
Mother and Father. 

Your loving friend, 


Dear Brother and Sister: 

My home is in an orange grove in California. My 
father was born near the Rio Grande river in Mexico. 
We moved to our new home because my father could get 
work. He works in the grove. At first I liked oranges, 
but I ate so many that I do not like them so well now. 

Near our home a woman with a pleasant face opened a 


76 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


Mission. It was in a room over a store. My mother 
and I went. I love to print the Golden Texts of the 
Sunday school lessons. I go to the public school. Father 
is very proud that I can read. Mother cannot read and 
she says she is too old to learn now. 

We have joined the church in our town. I am grow- 
ing very fast and I want to grow just as fast as a Chris- 
tian too. 

Your friend, 


Dear Sea Children : 

My father works in a mine in Arizona. He is a Mexi- 
can, but I am an American. My mother says she wants 
me to be a missionary to my people. There is a mission 
school near my house and I go there every day. The 
teachers are good to me and I study hard. Every week 
I learn many verses in the Bible. My father did. not want 
me to go to this school. He was afraid I would learn 
wrong things about God. Now he is glad. He says I 
am a better boy since I learned to pray and read the 
Bible and follow Christ. 

Your friend, 


Dear Friends: 

In the camp near our old shack, my father is a cook. I 
had a dear mother, but she was often sick. My father 
gets good pay, but often he spent it in buying whisky. A 
Sky Pilot sometimes comes to our camp and talks to the 
men about the Bible. He tells us all to love Christ and 
to ask God to forgive my sins. He is very kind to me. 
When my mother died, he took me to a mission school. 
My father sends the money each month to pay the tuition 
and board. The men in the camp also call me their little 
girl and send me money so my teachers can buy me shoes 
and warm gloves and dresses and books. 

Many of these men have become good Christians. The 
Sky Pilot wrote me last week, that my father had be- 


MOUNTAIN AND VALLEY CHILDREN 77 


come a Christian too and he is teaching him to read the 
Bible. 

In the camp a Chinaman helps my father cook and a 
Japanese drives one of the teams. They also send me 
presents. The Sky Pilot writes that both of these men 
now pray each day and he hopes the Chinaman will go 
back to China and be a missionary in his own country. 
He doesn’t smoke opium any more. The Japanese man 
is reading his Bible every day and is becoming a good 
man. 


Yours with love, 


XII 


THE REAL LIGHTHOUSE KEEPERS 

EAR the end of May, a great storm was 
raging on the ocean and the waves ran 
very high. The spray broke over the 
walls and Tom and Ruth could not go out 
of the house for several days. 

One Thursday morning, their father 
was taken very ill; soon he had a fever 
and was so weak that he had to go to bed. 
His pain was very great, and during that night he suf- 
fered so much that he could hardly speak. The next 
morning the children’s mother was also taken very sick 
and little Paul had the croup. Their mother was too 
weak to lift her head from the pillow, but told Tom and 
Ruth what medicines to give and said she believed that 
they would all be well again soon. 

Tom became the lighthouse keeper and Ruth was the 
little mother of the family. She hurried around from 
room to room, cooked the food, kept fresh drinking water 
by the beds, and sang as she worked. The next after- 
noon, their father had less pain and was able to walk 
about the house slowly, by leaning on a cane. A little 
after that, however, his pain returned and for three days 
he was not able to take his head from his pillow. 

The mother said : “ Dear children, there is a very 

bright side to our trouble, because you are both well, and 

78 



THE REAL LIGHTHOUSE KEEPERS 79 


we have the medicine we need to make your father and 
Paul and your mother well again. God is always with us 
too.” 

Tom was very careful to keep the big light burning 
brightly and was up in the lighthouse until ten o’clock 
each evening. The storm was severe and a whole week 
passed before the sea began to be quiet again. After 
the wind stopped blowing, the waves continued to run so 
high they broke in fury against the lighthouse wall. 
The danger signals in the harbors must have been given 
to the sailors, for not a single ship came within sight of 
the lighthouse for eight days. 

On the ninth morning, the parents were still very sick, 
but little Paul was going about again balancing himself 
between the chairs, as he was just learning to walk. 
When the sea grew calm, Tom’s father asked him to hoist 
as a signal of distress, a very large red flag. This was 
run up to the head of the little mast above the light at 
two o’clock in the afternoon, but no ship saw the 
signal, as the two ships that passed that afternoon were 
at a great distance from the light. The mother was 
very sick still, but her husband made a second attempt, by 
leaning on his cane, to wait upon her. Tom and Ruth 
did all they could and their mother and father many 
times told them how proud they were that they had such 
brave and good’ children. 

The supply ship was not expected to come until three 
days more had passed. The next morning after the sea 
was calm, at daylight several ships were within sight of 
the lighthouse, although far away on the horizon. The 
children were very anxious, for their father was not able 
to rise from the bed, and their mother was so sick that 
she could not answer when they spoke to her. 


8o THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


Each day in the early morning the children had sung 
and read a chapter in the Bible in the bedroom where 
their parents were sick, and their father had prayed that 
God would send some one to help them, when the storm 
should pass. Many times a day, Bobby put his nose on 
his master’s bed and seemed to say : “ I wish I could help 

too, but I am only a dog.” 

About ten o’clock, Ruth looked out of the window to- 
ward the shore, which she could not see of course, and 
thought of Uncle Rufus and Aunt Clara who would 
gladly come to help them if they knew of the trouble at 
the light. Suddenly she heard Tom shout from the 
room above : “ A big war-ship is coming toward the 

lighthouse. The telescope lets me see it very clearly.” 

Then he hurried down to the room where his father 
and mother were sick and Ruth said, as the tears came to 
her eyes : “ God has heard our prayer and answered it, 

and before it gets dark we will know who our helper is.” 

During the next hour the children gazed at the ap- 
proaching ship and often reported its progress. Soon a 
flag was run up from the front mast and their father 
said : “ We are safe now, children. The Captain is 

answering our signal of distress.” 

Soon the big friend stopped about a mile away and 
blew a long whistle. Then almost before the children 
could see what was happening, a launch came hurrying 
toward the lighthouse. In a few minutes it was at the 
wall and men were climbing up the ladder and running 
toward the house. One of them had a bag in his hand 
and the man behind him carried a big basket. It had be- 
gun to rain again and the children could not see the 
faces of the sailors. When Ruth and Tom ran down to 
open the door, they gave a great shout of joy and both 


THE REAL LIGHTHOUSE KEEPERS 81 


of them burst into tears, because there before them stood 
dear Uncle Jack, with the ship’s doctor and a nurse and 
four other men with baskets of food. 

Uncle Jack soon heard the story while the doctor and 
nurse cared for the sick. The father and mother were 
overcome with joy and praise to God for sending their 
dear friend to help them in their trouble. When the chil- 
dren had finished the exciting story of the long storm 
and the sickness of their parents, Uncle Jack lifted Tom 
and Ruth both up into his great strong arms, kissed them 
again and again and said : “ Bravo, my children. 

Richard and Clarissa couldn’t have done better if they 
had been here.” 

The next instant, Tom and Ruth found themselves on 
the floor hardly knowing whether they were laughing or 
crying, when Uncle Jack lifted them up and dropped 
them there. Then they followed him as he ran up into 
the light room and signaled to his first officer to send a 
wireless message to the shore to have a doctor and a 
nurse come at once to the lighthouse. 

An hour later, all was quiet, and the father and mother 
were sleeping peacefully with the nurse sitting by their 
beds. After eating a supper prepared by the cook, who 
was sent for by the Captain, Tom and Ruth were told 
that they must go to sleep at once and forget all about 
everything. 

Uncle Jack put an officer in charge of the light and re- 
turned to the war-ship to spend the night. The next 
morning very early a swift government boat raced from 
the harbor many miles away with a doctor and a nurse 
and a fresh supply of medicines. For two days after 
that the war-ship stayed near the lighthouse, while Uncle 
Jack remained with his sick friends all day. During this 


8 2 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


time, Ruth and Tom were on board and had a good time 
playing again with Tiger, and talking with the officers 
and sailors. 

When the sick father and mother became stronger and 
began to sit up a little, the supply ship came and then 
Uncle Jack said good-by. When he went away he 
promised to visit them again during the month of August 
and stay if possible a whole day, when Clarissa and 
Richard were at the light. After the Captain had gone, 
the doctor from the shore remained three days longer and 
the nurse stayed a whole month before the children’s 
parents were able to be left again. The captain of the 
supply ship had also left a man to remain two weeks to 
care for the light. Then Mr. Dodge, the lighthouse 
keeper, with Tom’s help, was able to look after the light 
until the supply ship came the next time. 

A month later, Uncle Jack surprised them again, be- 
cause he could not come in August as he had promised, 
as he would then be a thousand miles away in South 
American waters. On this last visit to the lighthouse, 
the children read to him all the letters that had come 
from the mission children. It took them a long time to do 
this, but Uncle Jack wanted to hear every one of them. 
After the last letter was finished, they all went out to the 
end of the wall and their dear friend told them many 
exciting stories about Cuba and Porto Rico and Mexico 
and described the boys and girls whom he had met there. 
He also had much to say about the Philippine Islands, 
China, Japan, and India and certain places in Africa 
where his war-ship had been. In these countries too, he 
had visited many of the missions, had talked with the 
missionaries, and had heard the children sing and repeat 
verses from the Bible. 


THE REAL LIGHTHOUSE KEEPERS 83 


Tom and Ruth will always remember what Uncle Jack 
said that day and the little talk he had with each of them 
about living a true Christian life, about praying and read- 
ing the Bible every day and trying in every way to please 
the Saviour. That evening they had to say good-by once 
more to the captain of the war-ship, who told them when 
he went away that in August, Richard and Clarissa could 
stay a full month at the lighthouse. 

The next morning Ruth wrote in her diary, “ Uncle 
Jack said, ‘ The Christians in the United States have the 
Bible and they must send it to the people in Cuba, Porto 
Rico, and Mexico. They must also give the Bible to all 
those who come from foreign countries and who do not 
know about God’s love or have forgotten to love and 
serve Him. The Bible is God’s love letter to the whole 
world, and the salvation Christ gives to all who trust 
Him and obey their Heavenly Father, is not for a few 
good people, but for all people. It is given to them 
whether they are good or bad, and when the bad people 
obey God they become good, then they at once learn 
how to do good unto all others, even to their enemies, if 
they have any. Christ wishes His salvation to be re- 
ceived by black men, yellow men, red men, brown men, 
white men, and gray men, if any people are gray. Mis- 
sionary work is giving the Gospel to every one. It is a 
big thing to try to do all this, but if a good many people 
try hard, the whole world will soon learn about Christ, 
and receive His salvation. Schools, hospitals, and 
churches must be built where they are needed and 
teachers, doctors, nurses, and missionaries must go and 
help in all the places where the people do not know about 
God and His Son, Jesus Christ. 

“ ‘ Children can help in all this work by giving and 


84 THE CHILDREN OF THE LIGHTHOUSE 


praying and reading about Missions. When the children 
grow up and become men and women, many of them 
ought to go and tell the people in the dark corners of the 
earth about the Saviour and His love for everybody/ ” 

When Ruth had finished writing these lines she read 
them to Tom who said : “ Please let me add a few lines.” 

Just then Ruth ran to the house to help her mother 
who called to her, and a little while later returned with 
Paul in her arms and set him down in front of her older 
brother. As she did this, Tom said: “ Ruth, just listen 
to what I have written in the diary. 4 The best letters 
we have ever had have come from the mission children. 
We have added all these boys and girls who have sent 
us these letters to our Mission Band. We call them the 
“Absent Members.” We have more than fifty members 
now in our Band, and the names of all of them are in 
our book. We have bound the letters up into a big 
book with stiff covers and we are always going to keep 
it. 

“ * If Mother and Father are willing and we can save 
up enough money, perhaps Ruth and I can have our let- 
ters printed and sent around so that the boys and girls on 
the land will see how interesting they are/ ” 

Just then their mother called: “Children, have you 
forgotten those four big envelopes from Cuba, Porto 
Rico, Chicago, and Los Angeles, that came yesterday on 
the supply ship ? ” 

So many things had happened that it was not strange 
that some things had been forgotten, while Uncle Jack 
was there. In a few minutes they were reading the new 
letters, but these cannot be repeated here. 































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